Chicago Tribune Declarations: Music Between the Wars Cedille Records CDR 90000 092 October 6, 2006 By John von Rhein The new album by the Pacifica Quartet, ensemble in residence at the University of Illinois and artists in residence at University of Chicago, illuminates a fascinating period in 20th Century music (1922-1931), as represented by Moravian Leos Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2 (“Intimate Letters”), the German Paul Hindemith’s Quartet No. 4, and the American Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1931 String Quartet. As Andrea Lamoreaux points out in her excellent liner notes, the thematic thread that draws together these disparate works is their composers’ public-spirited humanism. The Janacek is diamondlike in its luminosity, intensely dramatic, deeply autobiographical music laced with plaintive sonorities. The Crawford Seeger quartet, a landmark of 20th Century chamber music, is a study in dissonant dynamics that generates overwhelming tragic power. The five-movement Hindemith work bespeaks the contrapuntally complex, anti-romantic style cultivated by the composing Young Turks of Weimar Germany. The Pacifica players prove themselves to be splendid advocates of all three pieces; first-rate recording, too.