Daedalus Quartet - Perle: Works for String Quartet (2013)

The four pieces recorded here comprise Volume 1 of the Daedalus Quartet’s survey of George Perle’s music for string quartet. Writing of George Perle’s Windows of Order: String Quartet No. 8, the British critic Malcolm MacDonald states: “What is hard to convey in words, but is plain to the ear, is the sheer wealth of Perle’s inventiveness in musical shapes and sounds; his obvious delight in the quartet medium itself, and the wit and wisdom of his discourse throughout what must be ranked one of the string quartet masterpieces of the later 20th century.” San Francisco Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman called Perle “one of the great unsung modernists, a writer of expressiveness and wit who has never let his idiosyncratic devotion to the 12-tone system stand in the way of lyricism or rhetorical clarity.” It is Perle’s masterful control and expressive depth that one is constantly reminded of while listening to the Daedalus Quartet’s revelatory new recordings.