Arneis Quartet: Moving Shapes
Albany Records

Shapes Moving Through Time might have been an even better title for this eclectic set from the award-winning Arneis Quartet, given that its four works extend from a 1790s quartet by Joseph Haydn to ones written by Fanny Hensel, Ruth Crawford, and Elena Ruehr in 1834, 1931, and 2024, respectively. A major part of the satisfaction derived from the release comes from monitoring the dramatic contrasts that emerge when one gives way to another. It also testifies to Arneis Quartet's range and the confidence with which it tackles works created centuries apart. Whether it be a lyrical Romantic quartet or a contemporary one, the group brings conviction, clarity, and precision to its rendering of each.

Arneis Quartet, formed in 2009 and comprising Boston University faculty members Heather Braun and Rose Drucker (violins), Daniel Dona (viola), and Agnes Kim (cello), recorded the album in January 2025 at Boston's GBH Fraser Performance Studio. While the group could have opted to present the works chronologically, they instead begin with String Quartet 1931 by Crawford, the first woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition. One detects in the work her desire to reconcile modernist impulses with her affinity for a more popular and accessible style. That award enabled her to live in Berlin and Paris during 1930 and 1931 and perhaps more importantly exposed her to performances of Berg's Wozzeck and Bartók's String Quartet No. 4, experiences that couldn't help but exert an impact on her own writing.

The dissonant gestures that animate the restless “Rubato assai” and “Leggiero” do, in fact, exude a distinctly Bartók-ian quality and introduce Moving Shapes on an uncompromisingly modernist note. Whereas the angst-ridden “Andante” is distinguished by haunting tones that overlap and the application of hocketing techniques to the tremulous movement, the concluding “Allegro possibile” is as structurally innovative in its use of two-part counterpoint. The first voice separates itself clearly from the others when notes are added in succession to its phrase-making, while the other three voices adopt an inverse approach by shedding one note at every pass from the twenty that first appear.

From the sixty-eight string quartets written by Haydn (the so-called “father of the string quartet”), Arneis Quartet chose his String Quartet in D Major, Op. 71, No 2 for this project. The wit and charm that are so characteristic of his quartets are very much in play here too, and the pleasing harmonious character of its graceful “Adagio - Allegro” makes the change from Crawford to Haydn instantly clear. Dance figures and sunny melodic expressions bolster the first movement's appeal, after which the serene “Andante cantabile” casts its spell using less extroverted means. Exuberance is exchanged for elegance as the music wends its unhurried way until its place is taken by the breezy, scherzo-like charm of the “Menuetto. Allegro” and the high-spirited theatrics of the sizzling “Finale. Allegretto - Allegro.”

Intimating some modest degree of connection between the sensibilities of Crawford and her, the Boston-based Ruehr has stated about her music that its “surface be simple, the structure complex.” A faculty member at MIT since 1992 who's composed orchestral works, cantatas, songs, string quartets, and operas, Ruehr's here represented by her String Quartet No. 12 “Moving Shapes.” The chromaticism in Crawford's work surfaces too in Ruehr's “Fast Fourier Transform” when the strings' sinuous intertwining aligns to that of a mathematical model. Whereas an almost Baroque-styled dance feel gives “Circling Spiral” its enticing allure, “Shifting Clouds and Ocean Waves” see-saws in a manner not entirely removed from Glass-styled minimalism. But Ruehr quickly leaves the intro behind for a more interesting exploration that grows affecting in its emotional probing. Sprinkled with pizzicati, “Sunlight on Water” distances itself from the other parts until “Turbulent Waters” caps the work with energy and imagination rivaling the first movement. While Ruehr does fashion each one with a particular extra-musical concept in mind, it's important to emphasize that the movements and the quartet as a whole succeed as musical expressions first and foremost, with the concepts used as creative spurs, not crutches.

Felix's sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel is represented by her String Quartet in E-flat Major, an accomplished work that grew out of an uncompleted piano sonata initiated in 1829. Rather than framing adagio and scherzo movements with two allegros, she instead opted for a design featuring two pairs where a slow movement's followed by a faster one. In beginning with an aching “Adagio ma non troppo,” the quartet makes a powerful entrance, the subsequent “Allegretto” its sunny counterpoint. “Romanze” reinstates the lyrical grace of the opening movement, if even more expressively, before the riveting “Allegro molto vivace” ushers the work to a rapturous close.

Arneis Quartet has every reason to be proud of what it's accomplished with Moving Shapes. Not only is the material exceptionally well-executed and the performances razor-sharp, its range speaks to the group's command of a repertoire spanning centuries. Certainly its renditions of the Haydn and Hensel quartets are no less accomplished than its treatments of the ones by Crawford and Ruehr.

September 2026