From Amazon.com
August 15, 2009
Three Wonderful Quartets by an Underrecognized Master
By J Scott Morrison
Benjamin Lees (b. 1924) is one of America's (and the world's) most treasurable composers. And he's still writing music, the last I heard. He was born in Harbin, China (the son of Russian emigrants named Lysniansky) and was brought by them to the US as a baby where he grew up in California. He studied at USC under Ingolf Dahl and Halsey Stevens. And he studied privately with the former 'bad boy of music', George Antheil, to whom he gives great credit for his development as a composer. His music is uncommonly ingratiating, modern but not in your face about it. If I had to describe his music in one word it would be that it is 'alive'. Every moment seems to have something to command your rapt attention, whether it be melodic interest, harmonic invention or unexpected rhythms. In one of his quotable phrases Nicolas Slonimsky describes Lees' music as having 'euphonious dissonances.' Quite so.
The three quartets recorded here, although separated by fifty years (1st, 1952; 5th, 2001; 6th, 2005), are clearly in Lees unmistakable voice. The 1st is in three movements - moderato, slow, fast - and is neoclassical in form. The first movement is a modified sonata-allegro with two themes, development, recapitulation. The second is lyrical, mostly quiet. The third is a rondo with three subjects, two lively, one cantabile; it has a brief vigorous coda.
Quartet No. 5 is in four movmeents. Its first movement is stentorian and marked 'measured'. It incorporates continuous development of three themes. The second movement, marked 'Arioso', opens with a conversational duet between the two violins rather like a shared recitative. The movement is primarily lyrical but there are interruptions from the cello marked 'menacing'. These lose force and the two violins resume their dialog in the instruments' highest register, rather like birds soaring into the blue. The short third movement is marked 'quick, quiet'. In their booklet notes the Cypress Quartet describe the movement as ending in 'a puff of smoke.' The fourth movement is marked 'explosive' and after an agitated introduction becomes a frenzied quasi-fugue. There are brief islands of respite but the movement comes to a forceful close.
Quartet No. 6 was written for the Cypress Quartet and premièred in 2005. The first movement opens with a menacing tone but a lyrical subject appears out of the blue. These moods alternate and the movement ends with uneasy figures supplanted at the end by serenity. The second movement, marked 'calm, steady', begins with slow, quiet, hymn-like chords. A cello figure is developed contrapuntally and eventually the opening mood returns. The third movement, marked 'quiet, eerie', is short -- about 2 1/2 minutes -- and makes much use of diffident pizzicato notes in the upper strings. There is a churning forte passage before falling back into a pianissimo close with all four players playing pizzicato. The fourth movement has sardonic elements mixed with the calm, lyrical cello theme. The sassy tongue-in-cheek passages lead to a driving mood that gathers momentum until the final page which is marked 'as fast as possible.' The quartet ends breathlessly triumphant.
These three quartets are easily qualified for a place in the quartet repertoire. They are given marvelous performances by the San Francisco-based Cypress Quartet.
An easy recommendation.
From allmusic.com
August 2009
Review by Uncle Dave Lewis
Well it seems at last that composer Benjamin Lees has finally come into his own, and none too soon as the year 2009 witnessed his 85th birthday. For the longest time -- decades even -- all one could hear on recordings of Lees after the most diligent searching were two concertos, a couple of piano pieces, his first string quartet, second symphony, second violin sonata, and another, short orchestral work. This was during a time when a lot of contemporary American music was being recorded, and when the veil came down over this tiny, highly specialized area of the record industry circa 1980, Lees more or less totally disappeared from view. This was a pity, as Lees has always gone his own way as a musician, never followed trends, and his music is solid, unsentimental, and clearly contemporary without resorting to systems or bypassing his own aesthetic choices for any reason. With the new century, a flurry of new Lees recordings has followed, and now Naxos -- which last dropped in on Lees in 1998 through a recording of his Symphony No. 4, "Memorial Candles" -- rejoins the fray with an excellent offering of three of Lees' string quartets, performed ably and with dedication by the Cypress String Quartet.
By this disc's release, Lees had composed six string quartets, the last two directly for Cypress String Quartet. The String Quartet No. 5 (2002) was included on a list prepared by Chamber Music America of the "101 Great American Ensemble Works" and easily lives up to such hype, just by virtue of the driving intensity of its last movement alone. The String Quartet No. 6 (2005) seems poised at its start to take off from the platform that made its predecessor so appealing, and yet by the second movement it's already going in another direction, preferring a more still and mysterious mood for the second movement, a flittery texture and a growing sense of involvement in the third movement and a quirky, ominous waltz like conclusion capped off by a barrage of activity. In a way this quartet hearkens back to the classical (though not neo-classical) approach of Lees' String Quartet No. 1 (1952), receiving its second recording here in only about 50 or so years, the last one being made by the Juilliard String Quartet for the long defunct classical division of Epic Records.
Among record labels that handle contemporary music, there is often a kind of "wait your turn so everyone gets to speak" kind of rotation, the result being that no one gets to say very much. In such an atmosphere, it is easy to see why some great talents like Lees never seem to rise to the top. We can be grateful that Lees' distinct voice has been freed from neglect, and this new entry is a strong one, given his great skill in chamber music composition and the Cypress String Quartet's commitment to making this music sound the best that it can specifically.
From Naxos.com
David Denton
David's Review Corner, August 2009
Born in 1924, Benjamin Lees is one of the father figures in today’s North American music, his series of six quartets spread through his career, his Sixth completed four years ago at the age of eighty-one. The first dates from 1952, not long after completing a formal education interrupted by service in the Second World War. Its mood immediately states an individual voice that leans towards mid-European atonal music of the time, but in his case atonality was used to create a variant on melodic invention. Fashioned in three movements, of almost equal length, the central gently flowing Adagietto comes between movements of much animation and avoids any hint of the anger fresh from thoughts of the dreadful conflict. We move on forty-nine years to the Fifth which came in response to a request from the present performers, the Cypress String Quartet. They wanted a work to perform that would respond to the two surrounding composers, Shostakovich and Britten. I find the four movements that resulted as quintessential Lees, with little influence from either composer, though I like it that way. Maybe there is just a modicum of Russia in the final movement marked ‘Explosive’, but it is of passing significance. He writes intuitively for the instruments especially when they are in dialogue. Three years later the Cypress asked for another work resulting in the Sixth, again in four movements, the third—as in the previous work—being very short. The change comes in a finale marked, ‘Unhurried’, where for the first time we hear sadness in his music, and it appears to come from within. The playing is obviously in sympathy with a composer they must know very well, the American-based ensemble having a glittering array of famous instruments on which to produce beautiful sounds. The engineering in these world premiere recordings is excellent.
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