HEFTI 4 String Quartets

Leipzig String Quartet

MDG MDG3071773

David Philip Hefti is a rising star of Swiss composers, and it is good to have his four string quartets (2007-2011) on a major label instead of on Grammont, where most of them are "ghettoed" in some obscurity, little known abroad.

His quartets are strikingly original and completely assured, and he has a fine group in the Leipzig Quartet to put them across. Unusually difficult to write about, they sound "accessibly modernist" but with a positive conviction that he writes what he wants to hear and can take listeners with him.

There are full notes with translations by Thomas Meyer but they don't help that much. Instead, listen to part of his oboe concerto on an YouTube video, and you may be tempted to try one of the quartets...

Peter Grahame Woolf

"rich colour,great profundity, and refreshing newness in the king of chamber genres" [MDG]

Photo Credit: Mareike Niemz, 2012