Quartetto Danel's program of (mostly) late 20th century European string quartets was recorded live at the 14th Milano Musica Festival in 2005. Uncompromising modernism characterizes
Iannis Xenakis' 1983 Tetras, one of the composer's most important and frequently performed chamber works. Timbral variety is the work's most striking element; melody, easily identifiable harmony, and discernible structure are not immediately comprehensible. This piece should be most interesting to listeners able to respond viscerally to the gestures created primarily through extended techniques, and to the considerable energy that they generate. Ergma, from 1994, is highly dissonant and seething with angst, but it is a more structurally comprehensible piece, since for much of it the performers use more conventional string techniques and play homophonically, in rhythmic unison, rather than in complex, disjunct counterpoint. The program also includes Helmut Lachenmann's even more prolix Gran Torso,
György Kurtág's serene Aus der ferne III, and the first movement of Janácek's First Quartet as an encore.