Ahmet Adnan Saygun - String Quartets (Quatuor Danel)

Information

Composer: Ahmet Adnan Saygun

• String Quartet No. 1, Op. 27
• String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35
• String Quartet No. 3, Op. 43
• String Quartet No. 4, Op. 77 (fragment)

Quatuor Danel

    Marc Danel, violin

    Gilles Millet, violin

    Tony Nys, viola

    Guy Danel, cello

Date: 2006

Label: CPO

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/Ahmed-Adnan-Saygun-1907-1991-Streichquartette-Nr-1-4/hnum/6305138

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Review

A Turkish anti-Romantic catches the ear

The CPO label has already given us five symphonies by Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-91), probably the premier Turkish composer of the 20th century. Saygun was closely identified with the modernising policies of Kemal Atatürk, whose attempts to forge a progressive, secular identity for post-Ottoman Turkey included the dispatch of promising musicians to European capitals for specialised training. Saygun was taught in Paris by Vincent d’Indy but it was his later immersion in Anatolian folk music, including a joint expedition with Béla Bartók in 1936, that helped him find his mature voice.

I’m sure the four quartets will surprise you as they surprised me. Saygun clearly viewed the form from an anti-Romantic perspective with potentially ‘colourful’ native elements transmuted into a sophisticated, dissonant, increasingly abstract idiom. The First Quartet (1947), the only one of the set previously recorded, is also the only one notated as being ‘in’ a key, although it’s more modal than tonal. Sample, if you can, the haunting Adagio (disc 1, track 2) succeeded by an insinuating, minuet-like Allegretto. Much of the Second, written for the Juilliard in 1958 after Stokowski’s successful New York unveiling of the oratorio Yunus Emre, is plainly indebted to Bartók. Elsewhere Saygun seems content to meander, albeit in vaguely hypnotic fashion.

The Third Quartet (1966), oddly shaped, ultimately repetitious, is not a little inscrutable, while the Fourth’s a mere torso, composed, like Haydn’s Op 103, in extreme old age. The composer would surely have been delighted by these performances. There’s only the occasional sniff to complain about. Just don’t expect easy listening.

-- David Gutman, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/apr06/Saygun_Quartets_9999232.htm

https://www.allmusic.com/album/saygun-complete-string-quartets-mw0001857811

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Ahmet Adnan Saygun (7 September 1907 – 6 January 1991) was a Turkish composer, musicologist and writer on music. One of a group of composers known as the Turkish Five who pioneered western classical music in Turkey, his works show a mastery of Western musical practice, while also incorporating traditional Turkish folk songs and culture. His extensive output includes five symphonies, five operas, two piano concertos, concertos for violin, viola and cello, and a wide range of chamber and choral works. Saygun was known not only as a composer but also as a scholar, an ethnomusicologist, and a teacher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmet_Adnan_Saygun

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Quatuor Danel is a French/Belgian string quartet established in June 1991. The ensemble has worked with the Amadeus Quartet, the Borodin Quartet, as well as members of the Beethoven Quartet and the LaSalle Quartet. Known for classical, early modern and contemporary repertoire, they tour internationally and have an extensive discography. They have both recorded and performed the first complete cycle of string quartets by Mieczysław Weinberg, as well as a complete cycle of the quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich. Since 2005, the Danel has been "Quartet in Residence" at the University of Manchester.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danel_Quartet

https://www.quatuordanel.eu/

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