AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE BLACKWOOD: Quartets (3). Authors: Lehman Issue: July, 2000 Much like Cedille 16 (Jan/Feb 1994), which paired Easley Blackwood's 1955 First Symphony with his 1990 Fifth Symphony, this new release contrasts Blackwood's two early string quartets from the late 1950s with his recent Third Quartet of 1998. The two earlier quartets in Blackwood's original style are dissonant, linear, and recondite. The biggest influence is Hindemith, but one also detects Blackwood's familiarity with Berg, Bartok, and Shostakovich, among others. Despite these influences and Blackwood's youth when he wrote these quartets, he was a strong and independent personality by then, and they don't really sound much like anyone else. Certainly their eccentricities are entirely the composer's own. The central Andante of the First Quartet, for instance, with its off-kilter canonic clockwork ticking quietly away under sighing cantilenas, is both unforgettable and instantly recognizable as by this composer and no other. His strange combination of mechanical pulse, contrapuntal rigor, dry wit, anxious obsession, and tenderness is unique. The bold originality and sheer technique in the Second Quartet are even more impressive, especially in its skirling, demonic central prestissimo and the finale, a forlorn molto lento unexpectedly interrupted by an episode of swirling, fantastic cascades, which is recapitulated--incredibly--as an exact palindrome (that is, played backwards). I've admired these astonishing quartets (in taped broadcasts) for nearly two decades, and I'm thrilled to have them on disc. I've been much more skeptical about Blackwood's recent tonal music, finding much of it (like the Cello Sonata on Cedille 8, July/Aug 1992) to be pale anachronism, saliently lacking the audacious imagination that enlivens his earlier music. But I have to admit that Blackwood is getting very good at this sort of ventriloquism. The expansive (indeed rather lengthy) Third Quartet, which sounds like the work of a very skillful early-20th Century conservative (Blackwood mentions Franck, Ravel, and Verdi in his notes; but I thought of Karl Weigi, Algot Haquinius, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Desire Paque) pours forth its innocuous triads and decorous phrases so deftly that the music no longer sounds ersatz. There is something very like real emotion in the adagio, and the fast movements even sport a few piquant harmonic touches. So maybe he has perfected his time-machine. The Pacifica Quartet plays with precision, flair, and passion; sonics are strong and natural, with a front-row recital-hall perspective rather than a way-up-close studio immediacy. The Third Quartet is very pretty but very tame; it's the two earlier quartets that make this an indispensable release for anyone who cares about chamber music of the past 50 years. COPYRIGHT 2000 Record Guide Productions