Conti: Opere Per Archi [CD]

Diego Conti's recent composition for string quartet/quintet can be placed in the aesthetic context which can be roughly defined, given any inevitable historical and conceptual adjustments, as post-modern. There is a multitude of approaches to sound, according to various different and diverging strategies (ranging from the prolongation of serial combinatorial rows on material and stylistic morphology in Ligeti to modulation/pluri- linguistic modelling in Berio, from the synthesis of minimal iteration and tonal orders in figures such as John Adams or Louis Andriessen to the clearance of practices and languages of other creative-musical areas, seventies' art music has gradually abandoned the teleological, progressive tendency of it's historical path. The language of composition has ceased to recognize the essential reference point in it's most advanced frontier and has become a complex macro-area at it's core, widely accessible, and able to be explored in all it's domains even as far as the confines of the avantgarde frontier thanks, above all, to an interplay involving many possible directions, crossings and even multiple settlements. The recording is the result of the collaboration between the composer and the Chaos String Quartet, which was formed within the student environment of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, one of the most prestigious international musical institutions.