At the Center of All Things
AT THE CENTER OF ALL THINGS brings together the expressive, early-music influenced string quartets of Stanley Grill with the intense, visceral sound of the Diderot Quartet’s gut-stringed instruments. A composer for whom the string quartet is the perfect medium to express, in a modern idiom, his passion for the contemplative aspects of Renaissance vocal music, the CD includes three of Stanley Grill’s many string quartets: American Landscapes, Lonely Voices and the title track, At the Center of All Things.
Raised in New York City, Stanley Grill has spent a life-time composing music as an act of translation, trying to understand the world and convey that understanding in musical terms. Two main themes carry through in his work – music composed as a reflection of the physical world and music composed to inspire and promote world peace. These themes are at the heart of all three works included on AT THE CENTER OF ALL THINGS.
American Landscapes captures that part of America that exists only in imagination – a far better place than the reality. Portraying the same disparities that exist in the real one – the stark contrasts between hectic cities teeming with people of all kinds, small quiet towns with houses out of Hopper paintings, vast stretches of unpopulated forests and mountains, smoke stacks belching smoke for miles, trains that go on forever, endless fields of grain – the music imagines an idealistic America that lacks the violence, crassness and extremism that is as ingrained in American culture as is what is best about us.
Lonely Voices embodies in sound that “lonely voice in the wilderness” that cries out for peace in an increasingly violent world. Written as part of the composer’s on-going Music for Peace project, in each movement, one member of the quartet cries out as the lonely voice – the first violin, the viola, the cello and finally the second violin. The quartet is intended to encourage thoughts about the possibility and hope for lasting world peace.
The title track, At the Center of All Things, is a single movement set of variations inspired by one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Buddha” poems.
“…and he is Star. And multitudes of giant stars that we don’t see stand all around him. He is everything.”
The music imagines being at the vast center of our galaxy of stars, centered and quiet in the midst of their vast spinning wheels of light. The wheel spins faster and faster, but the center holds, in deep, perfect, stillness.
The unique sound that emerges from the Diderot Quartet’s period instruments is ideal for these three introspective and intensely personal works. On this CD, the Diderot gives a brilliant, evocative performance that perfectly captures the nature of the composer’s work – music that is completely contemporary while simultaneously looking back in time to the beauty and harmony of early vocal music.
This recording was produced by Ralph Farris, founding member of the string quartet ETHEL.
