To celebrate twenty years of existence, the internationally acclaimed Cuarteto Quiroga returns with a new CD album —8th release of their discography— which represents a personal tribute to the genre –and its literature– from its origins to the present day, with a unique perspective. Featuring works of the three most important and historically influential composers in string quartet history –Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven & Béla Bartók— together with a world premiere recording of Secreta, a recent masterpiece by one of the absolute greatest living composers of our time, György Kurtág, ATOMOS is a CD that aims to illustrate how these composers, in search for the nucleus of musical expression, and in their desire to compress sound to a particle incapable of further division —in other words, to its atom (ἄτομος)— gave birth to some of the most striking musical achievements in what is in any case an exceptional repertoire. Because, isn’t the ability to say a lot in a short space of time –while maintaining the same level of idiomatic subtlety and managing to build a complete narrative structure– not a quality of the most extraordinary and transformative rarity? Does that concision not enhance the strength of the message? Isn’t compression the most genuine gesture of revolutionary vision, in linguistic, narrative and poetic terms? Does brevity not enhance the eloquence of the message? In this fascinating journey through the art of musical concentration these four extraordinary composers reveal, through the works here recorded, what is –in music as in life– the most remarkable of gifts, one only within the reach of the greatest: the humility to pare oneself down to the minimal essence and allow the music speak for itself, with the most persuasive eloquence and the most moving kind of beauty.
