Various Artists - Four Quarters (CD)

The Solem Quartet has established itself as one of the most innovative, adventurous ensembles of it's kind, a reputation cemented by this album, in which movements from The Four Quarters by Thomas Adès are interspersed with pieces by composers from Florence Price to Kate Bush, several of them arranged by the ensemble. In The Four Quarters, Adès charts the course of a day, with the Solem Quartet building a program around this structure so that the whole album becomes a chronological journey. Ivor Gurney and Henry Purcell add to the theme with Sleep and Now does the glorious day appear, while Bartók transports us to An Evening in the Village and Robert Schumann soothes with a Child Falling Asleep. There is folk music in the form of Ca' the Yowes, to words by Robert Burns, and contemporary works by Cassandra Miller, William Marsey and Aaron Parker. The program is completed by Florence Price's soulful Summer Moon, and an arrangement of Kate Bush's And Dream of Sheep.