Crumb: Black Angels

“I wanted our audience to not be prepared,” explains Kronos Quartet’s founder and first violinist, David Harrington, to Apple Music Classical. “You just put on the recording and bang, you’re hearing ‘Night of the Electric Insects’.” That loud, frenetic screeching which opens Kronos Quartet’s Black Angels, first released in 1990, replicates Harrington’s own nerve-shredding experience when he first encountered the title work which inspired the creation of his quartet. One of the most extraordinary string quartets of the 20th century, Black Angels was American composer George Crumb’s reaction to the horrific images of the Vietnam War brought to Americans at home during the 1960s. Harrington first heard that quartet broadcast in August 1973, having himself just missed being drafted into the American Army. “The American involvement had ceased,” he says, “but the effects of that war were all over our society. Our young musicians were trying to figure out the right music to play. I had the radio on by accident. This music came on. I’d found my song, and I had to start a quartet. We had to play that piece.” Crumb’s “electric string quartet” presents an extraordinary and unforgettable journey: the players are amplified, as well as being required to play various percussion instruments and to create ethereal sounds by bowing crystal glass filled with different levels of water. Kronos then effectively unpack its various qualities in the programme that follows. First, a multi-track arrangement of Thomas Tallis’ 40-voice Spem in alium, the refined beauty of that work contrasting with the disturbing world of trauma set out in Doom. A Sigh by Hungarian composer István Márta. For relief, the Kronos then play in duet with a wonderfully bonkers recorded performance by American composer Charles Ives of “They are There!” Finally, Shostakovich’s despondent yet sober String Quartet No. 8 appears effectively illuminated by all that has passed on this remarkable album.