Kronos quartet concert in Moscow

Irina Kulik reports The Kronos Quartet is one of those rare phenomena that gives meaning to the awkward concept of "academic avant-garde". In theory, the eternal avant-garde experiment and the academic canon are incompatible things. However, “Kronos” manages to combine classical elegance with the high adventurousness of avant-garde search and rock and roll drive.
The Kronos quartet arose in 1973, when both rock musicians, who were bored with composing standard pop hits, and avant-garde composers who had long since left the conservatory framework, were playing with all their might on dissected pianos and detuned guitars, sea shells and household utensils, ethnic instruments and synthesizers, created joint shows with artists, dancers and video artists. The American Kronos has absorbed all these experiments and innovations. Along with classical strings, their music contains electronic sounds; among the musicians with whom they performed and recorded were virtuosos of traditional instruments from India, China and Africa, masters of Tuvan throat singing, gypsy ensembles and Mexican rockers. The Kronos Quartet's performances are the least like dean chamber music concerts - they are real multimedia shows with video projections and complex lighting effects, which were worked on by the same directors who worked on the Rolling Stones' stadium performances.
The Kronos Quartet's repertoire is strikingly diverse. They play a five-hour piece by that most austere of minimalists, Morton Feldman—and a string version of Jimi Hendrix's hit "Purple Haze." They perform quartets by Dmitry Shostakovich and Henry Purcell, as well as tangos by Astor Piazzolla and works by the great mystifier of avant-garde jazz, John Zorn. The most famous works by Philip Glass and Steve Reich were written especially for them. They had the opportunity to perform with David Bowie, Tom Waits and the patriarch of beat poetry, Allen Ginsberg, and record music for films and modern dance performances.
They say about the Kronos quartet that they destroyed the boundaries between all possible musical genres. But in their music there is nothing from all sorts of diet versions of rock arranged for symphony orchestras or classical hits performed by pop divas. Kronos quartet does not popularize or simplify anything. On the contrary, they completely confuse everything and everyone, destroy all formats and stereotypes. American musicians do not explode the classical canon, but constantly reform it, giving the avant-garde and rock the indisputability of the classics and ridding the classics of the academic marble deadness.
The new program with which the Kronos Quartet comes to Moscow looks like another dizzying adventure. This is a joint project of the renowned string quartet and the Kluster group of Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen. Pohjonen is as little like a traditional accordionist as Kronos is like a classical string quartet. The Finnish musician has been called the “Jimmy Hendrix of the accordion,” and his performances are not just performances by a virtuoso musician, but a unique audiovisual experience that equals the artist’s acting skills, fantastic lighting and high-tech sound effects. The music, composed by Kimmo Pohjonen for his performance with the Kronos Quartet, is a unique soundscape created by a previously unheard of combination of strings, accordion, voice and electronic instruments. The performance of Kluster and Kronos Quartet at the Moscow Youth Palace promises to be a real multimedia extravaganza with many visual effects.
MDM, September 7 (19.30), order tickets - 782 8848, 933 3200, 258 0000

Magazine “Kommersant Weekend” No. 163 dated 09/03/2004, p. 22

Authors:

Irina Kulik

Virtuosos of the academic avant-garde