G COATES

String Quartets — No 1; No 5; No 6

Kreutzer Quartet (Peter Sheppard Skxrved, Gordon MacKay vns Bridget Carey va Neil Heyde ye) Naxos 0 8 559091 (59 minutes: DDD)

Gloria Coates proves to have a distinctive string quartet voice well worth hearing

Gloria Coates is the American composer who has been based in Munich since 1969 and in the last few years has gained an increasing profile on CD. Michael Oliver has admired her orchestral works (3/97; 2/99, both CPO) and there is a special atmosphere about her music. She has her own sound, which is difficult to acquire these days.

Much of this is to do with Coates' systematic employment of glissandos and microtones. The opening of Quartet No 5 (1988) uses diatonic material but half the quartet is tuned a quartertone higher. At first it's excruciating but then the separate tunings seem logical, like the different

Avow. CLoirti

GLORIA COATIS

Sake/mm.4a tiorali rhythmic systems of T\Tancarrow's piano studies. All three movements of this Quartet are concerned with sounds sustained without a break. The second and third are both based on glissandos. The title of the third movement, `In the Fifth Dimension', reflects its central sound, based on perfect fifths, familiar as open strings tuning up. The early Quartet No 1(1966), entitled Protestation Quartet, is quite different. This is a single movement lasting less than six minutes. The textures are varied but they are dominated by an ostinato pattern, which comes in and out of focus. All credit to cellist, Neil Heyde, for delivering this in exposed high harmonics!

Quartet No 6 (1999) is again preoccupied with continuous sounds, glissandos and quarter-tones. It's a discriminating kind of texture music but the shadow of Cage's First String Quartet (1950) falls over the mesmeric, static landscape of the last movement, `Evanescence'. Never mind: it's a tradition worth exploring in new ways.

Committed performances, well recorded, launch a new experience in the string quartet repertoire. Peter Dickinson