Chou Wen-Chung Chamber Music

String Quartets No.1 “Clouds” (1996) & No.2 “Streams” (2003)
Twilight Colors (2007) for double trio of woodwinds and strings

The Brentano Quartet
Boston Musica Viva/Richard Pittman
Mode 235

A disc of contrapuntal music that will appeal to Bach-lovers and only gradually reveal its secrets.

Start with Quartet No 2, a meditation on Bach's Art of Fugue which extends traditional fugal writing: "a complete absorption of what Bach is in another idiom" [Chou W-Ch].

Then enjoy Twilight Colors, a double trio for woodwinds and strings. Clouds, the earliest here, "explores a wide expressive range and an organic approach to formal continuity" [Yauoi Uno Everett, whose extensive analytic notes really do help the listener!].

Serious, timeless music, strongly recommended to collectors who value such masterworks as Bach fugues and Beethoven's last string quartets.

Peter Grahame Woolf

See also Lei Lang portrait