These five works for string quartet by Lei Liang draw on some of his longest standing sources of inspiration, highlighting the depth of his connection to diverse musical traditions. Featuring several of today's most critically acclaimed string quartets (Brentano, JACK, Mivos, and Formosa), the collection is a wonderful opportunity to hear Liang's aesthetic versatility in music for an iconic instrumentation, as well as his reverence for the music cultures which have significant meaning to him.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 65:20 | |||
| 01 | Lamento della ninfa | Lamento della ninfa | Brentano Quartet | 6:04 |
| 02 | Gobi Gloria | Gobi Gloria | JACK Quartet | 11:07 |
| 03 | Song Recollections | Song Recollections | Formosa Quartet | 22:18 |
| 04 | Serashi Fragments | Serashi Fragments | Mivos Quartet | 7:09 |
| 05 | Madrigal Mongolia | Madrigal Mongolia | Brentano Quartet | 18:42 |
This collection of string quartets by Lei Liang provides a window into some of his most meaningful sources of inspiration, with a special focus on Mongolian traditional music which has captivated Liang's imagination for many years. The album is also an opportunity to hear Lei Liang realize his aesthetic goals using an instrumentation that has brought out the best of so many composers since its codification in the 18th century. Lei Liang’s breadth of musical curiosity and openness is matched by his depth of investment in immersing himself in the traditions from which he draws, an involvement that grows from a study and personal connection alike.
The album opens with an elegant setting of Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa, a madrigal which is set as a dialogue between a lamenting nymph and three sympathetic male voice parts. Lei Liang revels in Monteverdi’s voice leading and changes of pace in the opening section, taking advantage of the Brentano Quartet’s impeccable ensemble playing, as the group breathes as one. Cello pizzicato supports the solo violin line (a stand-in for the nymph) in a lilting Chaconne progression, while other voices enter with embellished imitation and poignant suspensions.
Gobi Gloria, performed by the JACK Quartet, is the first of three works on this recording that is inspired by Mongolian music. One of Lei Liang’s priorities in his adaptations of folkloric material is a diligent understanding of stylistic subtleties, arrived through exhaustive study. We can hear this reverential approach in the detailed ornamentation and embellishment in Gobi Gloria. Lei’s treatment of a primary melody utilizes contrapuntal techniques that would have been familiar to Monteverdi (or at least certainly Bach, Schoenberg, and Babbitt!), subjecting it to inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion treatment. Glissandi, trills, timbral shifts, and sweeps of harmonics color the evocative texture. At the work’s first climax, waves of sound cascade and crest, coalescing into a cathartic dance, while a culminating subsequent peak ushers in the work’s close joyfully, with jaunty rhythms in the high strings and spiky accented pizzicati in the low strings, setting a melody from the Nei Monggol region as a kind of cantus firmus.
Read MoreLei Liang turns to the music of Taiwan’s Aboriginal tribes for source material in Song Recollections, performed by the Formosa Quartet. He draws on several songs from this tradition in the work, treating each like its own landscape through which the listener travels. This approach highlights Liang’s vibrant vocabulary of colors in his string writing; we hear grainy ponticello timbres, circular and ricochet bowing, percolating pizzicati leading into evocative slides, delicate tremolo articulations, and halos of ensemble harmonics. The quartet plays staggered pizzicati, its sonic drops fusing together to become a midday rain shower; rich, vibrato-laden lines intertwine to sound an expansive anthem. Expressive microtonality shades the harmonic and melodic content within a hazy, amorphous frame in select sections, while elsewhere, broad pentatonic harmony is a counterpoint, providing the basis for energetic timbral and motivic development.
Serashi Fragments is a tribute to Serashi, a 20th century performer on the Mongolian two-string fiddle called the chor. Liang is careful in his program note to write that the work is not an imitation of Serashi’s playing style, or the music of Mongolia. Instead it represents an abstract impression Serashi has made on Liang, and is the most experimental music on the album. The work opens with a dialogue between brazen, accented chords and fragile gestures emerging from a charged silence. A dense texture follows, with furious double stops supporting accumulating tremolandi and glissandi. The negative space in the work is full of potential energy, set up by dramatic truncated phrases. The overall character of Serashi Fragments is one of pent-up intensity, released in short, explosive bursts in quiet and loud passages alike, save for the ending, which diffuses that energy in a squirrelly ascending passage.
In contrast, the material in and spirit of Madrigal Mongolia is very intentionally grounded in the music of Inner Mongolia. Lei Liang cites a friend of his family in childhood and Mongolian scholar, Wulalji, as the source of his lifelong love for this musical tradition, as well as the enduring influence of Professor Chou Wen-chung. The music reflects Liang’s abiding love for this tradition, as the piece opens with a meditative series of homophonic chords that swell and recede like inhalations and exhalations. A rich melody in the cello is accompanied first by light pizzicati in the ensemble and later by soaring sustains in the high strings. A contrasting section of fleet, bracing chromatic passagework and angular accents follows. Beginning at 9:58, once again we hear Liang’s sensitivity to stylistic elements in a powerful passage that highlights subtle embellishments and ornamentation, adapting the string instruments to inflections of traditional vocal singing. The work closes as it began, with a resonant chorale in the quartet, an homage to the resilience and timelessness of an ancient culture.
– Dan Lippel
Performance Dates:
Brentano Quartet, Lamento della ninfa, Madrigal Mongolia, February 28, 2025
Formosa Quartet, Song Recollections, April 20, 2016
JACK Quartet, Gobi Gloria, February 13, 2013
Mivos Quartet, Serashi Fragments, October 12, 2016
All live recordings were made in Conrad Prebys Concert Hall at the University of California, San Diego
Producer: Lei Liang
Editing mixing and mastering: Sam Dunscombe
Engineers: Sam Dunscombe (1, 3, 5), Joe Kucera (2), Andrew Munsey (4)
Assistant engineers: Keene Cheung (1, 5), Tien-Jo (Sandra) Chang (3)
Cover Image: Albert Liang
Design: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Publisher: Schott Music Corporation, New York (ASCAP)
Chinese-born American composer Lei Liang is the winner of the Rome Prize, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, a Creative Capital Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His concerto Xiaoxiang for saxophone and orchestra was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015. His orchestral work, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2021.
Lei Liang was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! new music series. Other commissions came from the Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, among others. Lei Liang’s ten portrait discs are released on Naxos, New World, Mode, Albany and Bridge Records. He has edited and co-edited five books and editions, and published more than forty articles.
Lei Liang studied with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Robert Cogan, Chaya Czernowin, Mario Davidovsky, and received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (B.M. and M.M.) and Harvard University (Ph.D.). He is Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. His catalogue of more than a hundred works is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York).
The Brentano String Quartet is one of the preeminent chamber ensembles of its generation, acclaimed for its rich sound, profound interpretations, and stylistic versatility. Formed in 1992, the quartet includes violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violist Misha Amory, and cellist Nina Lee. They have performed on major stages around the world, including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and the Library of Congress. Winners of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the inaugural Cleveland Quartet Award, the Brentano Quartet has earned praise for both classical repertoire and adventurous new works. They have commissioned pieces by composers such as Lei Liang, Vijay Iyer, and Steven Mackey. Currently the ensemble-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, they previously held a long-term residency at Princeton University. With a deep commitment to education and artistic exploration, the Brentano String Quartet continues to engage audiences with performances that are intellectually rigorous, emotionally rich, and musically compelling.
https://www.brentanoquartet.com/The JACK Quartet electrifies audiences worldwide with "explosive virtuosity" (Boston Globe) and "viscerally exciting performances" (New York Times). David Patrick Stearns (Philadelphia Inquirer) proclaimed their performance as being "among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience." The Washington Post commented, "The string quartet may be a 250-year-old contraption, but young, brilliant groups like the JACK Quartet are keeping it thrillingly vital." Alex Ross (New Yorker) hailed their performance of Iannis Xenakis' complete string quartets as being "exceptional" and "beautifully harsh," and Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times) called their sold-out performances of Georg Friedrich Haas' String Quartet No. 3 "mind-blowingly good."
The recipient of New Music USA's 2013 Trailblazer Award, the quartet has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Suntory Hall (Japan), Salle Pleyel (France), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (Netherlands), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Reykjavik Arts Festival (Iceland), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (Germany), and Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany).
Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is focused on the commissioning and performance of new works. In addition to working with composers and performers, JACK seeks to broaden and diversify the potential audience for new music through educational presentations designed for a variety of ages, backgrounds, and levels of musical experience.
The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music and studied closely with the Arditti Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Muir String Quartet, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
http://www.jackquartet.com/Hailed for their “spellbinding virtuosity” (BBC Music Magazine), the Formosa Quartet is committed to an insatiable search for the fresh and new in string quartet expression that goes “beyond the beautiful and into the territory of unexpectedly thrilling” (MUSO Magazine). Since winning the 1st Prize and Amadeus Prize at the 10th Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, the Formosa Quartet has sustained a vibrant career celebrating the string quartet as a vehicle for advocacy, storytelling, reinvention, and innovation. From major concert halls including the Smithsonian, Taipei’s National Concert Hall, and the Berliner Philharmonie to K-12 schools around the country, the Formosa Quartet’s “brilliant energy and carefully detailed authenticity” (Sequenza21) can be heard in their uncompromisingly exploratory approach to the standard and modern string quartet literature including commissions, unique sets curated from its collection of folk, pop, jazz, and poetry arrangements; and the socio-culturally probing American Mirror Project.
https://www.formosaquartet.com/The Mivos Quartet, “one of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles” (The Chicago Reader), is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting diverse new music to international audiences. The quartet, founded in New York City in 2008, commissions and premieres new repertoire for string quartet, and is dedicated to creative collaborations with a wide variety of artists. Mivos maintains an active international performance schedule, with regular appearances at festivals including Lucerne Festival, Wien Modern, June in Buffalo, Shanghai New Music Week, Darmstadt Summer Institute and VIPA Festival. Mivos takes part in many educational residencies at universities and summer festivals, working with young performers and composers to develop their skills. Their most recent album includes all the Steve Reich String Quartets on Deutsche Grammophon (2023). The members of Mivos are violinists Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya and cellist T.J. Borden.
On this new collection, Liang picks up where his last album, Dui, which I described as defining “a sublime approach to chamber music as informed by his Chinese heritage,” left off. Instead of duets, he takes on the string quartet, starting with a time-traveling arrangement of Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa, performed by the Brentano String Quartet, who also close the album with the sweet melancholy of Madrigal Mongolia. In between, we get the JACK, Formoso, and Mivos Quartets, each one as dazzling and committed as the others, putting Liang’s warmth, intelligence, and deeply informed blend of Mongolian and classical traditions on high-definition display. Wherever Liang turns his attention next, I’m sure it will be equally beautiful and rewarding.
— Jeremy Shatan, 10.18.2025
The string quartet music of Chinese-American composer Lei Liang integrates folk traditions into a forward-looking and often lyrical contemporary sensibility. String Quartets: Live from New Focus Recordings sums up his inspired work for this format with live recordings by four different ensembles made over the past 20 years.
First up is a transcription for string quartet of the “Lamento della Ninfa” by Claudio Monteverdi. In this fascinating song from the early 1600s, Monteverdi specifies that the soprano, as the Nymph, is to sing “al tempo dell’affetto del animo” – according to the emotions – while the three male singers hold “al tempo della mano” (to the timing of the hand), e.g. to a regular beat. (Here’s a performance of the original by members of the Gesualdo Six and soprano Helen Charlston.) Liang’s faithful transcription for strings includes simulation of the plucking of a lute accompanying the “voices.” The Brentano Quartet’s performance expresses the emotional nuance Monteverdi calls for.
Next up is “Gobi Gloria,” which derives from Liang’s experience of Mongolian music. Listeners may be familiar with the eerie sound of throat singing, as its techniques have seeped into contemporary Western vocal music over the past few decades. We hear in the first section harmonics like you hear in Tuvan throat singing, along with frequent portamentos. In the middle section, music in the lower register suggests the deep drones of the Tuvan tradition, though with more rhythmic content. In the third section, harmonics, drones, melody, and rhythm converge. Within its restrictive folk modality, the music leaps and soars, huddles and cogitates, in the JACK Quartet’s evocative performance.
For “Song Recollections” Liang turned to folk music from aboriginal Taiwanese tribes. This is not a folk tradition with which I was familiar, but it seems to bear modal and other similarities to other East Asian music. In parts of this composition Liang asks the musicians to simulate not only the techniques but the colors of traditional instruments, and the Formosa Quartet, which champions Indigenous cultures and Taiwanese music, achieves this. (I’m old enough to remember when Western maps called Taiwan Formosa, a name derived from the Portuguese.)
In the 22-minute string quartet’s first song, harmonic swells are visited hesitantly by flickers of motion; only after several minutes does a plucked melody arrive. The pizzicatos take over but before you know it the song is over. The second song is fully devoted to the plucked sounds of folk instruments. The melody is sometimes hard to distinguish from the prickly accompaniment.
With its pentatonic mode, the third song resembles Chinese music that’s more familiar to Western ears, though interestingly the instruments here revel in the qualities of sound most native to the violin, viola, and cello. Tension gives way to pure excitement as the tempo drives upward.
A contemplative feeling presides over the atmospheric fourth song, where harmonic swells return, lazily shift from consonance to dissonance, and linger to create broad swaths of space without resolution. Weary wobbles and the merest hints of accented melody introduce the final song, which builds into a rhythmic rave-up of songful multiplicity for an energized conclusion.
In “Serashi Fragments,” performed by the Mivos Quartet, Liang pays tribute to Serashi (1887-1968), a master of the Mongolian chor, an ancient two-string fiddle native to what is now the North China Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The piece is an abstract reflection on its sources, not a direct evocation, which is just as well, as few listeners will be familiar with chor music, which even for the curious is hard to find online.
The word “Fragments” in the title perhaps suggests a deconstruction, but if so, the music doesn’t provide clues as to what might be being deconstructed, and that’s OK. That this is deeply personal music is clear. Its fragments roll forward linearly, stringing together harmonic incidents, squeals and whines, and aggressive plucking, some of it so quiet it feels like a trip into the distant recesses of the mind.
Liang stays in Mongolia with “Madrigal Mongolia,” a reflection on the heartsickness and homesickness fundamental to Mongolian folk music. Portentously swaying chord changes have a Copland-esque grandeur in the sentimental early going. Jackknifing accentuation punctuates jittery sawing in another section. Eight minutes in, breathy tone clusters float above hesitant suggestions of rhythm and tune. Dramatic gestures carry powerful feeling in the next section.
The famous horsemen of Mongolia were often far from home, and the region’s folk music reflects that. Celestial harmonies waft in and out of focus. In the final minutes, the chords from the beginning return: Storytelling time is over as another day on the road dawns.
Collected over the past 20 years, the string quartet music on this album reflects the composer’s enduring engagement with folk traditions from his homeland and elsewhere. We often think of the Mongols as bloodthirsty warriors. In fact the Mongolian Empire, more than the great empires that preceded it, looked with great intellectual curiosity into the civilizations it spanned. Liang’s music fits right in with that openness.
— Jon Sobel, 12.26.2025
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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