Candybox by Matangi Quartet

Matangi Quartet

Candybox

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917406221
Catnr: CC 74062
Release date: 30 November 2010

1 CD

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917406221

Catalogue number
CC 74062

Release date
30 November 2010

"''De Tulipa Matangi is vernoemd naar het jubilerende kwartet. Maria Paula Majoor:'Het is debiel zo mooi recht als die tulp blijft'.'' ''The Tulipa Matangi is named after the jubilee quartet. Maria Paula Majoor, "It's so beautiful straight moron as this tulip remains'' Paul Janssen Luister september/oktober 2010"

Luister, 01-10-2010

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

A luxurious Anniversary-candybox with different musical sweets. The music fits the quartet like a glove and with it the quartet celebrates that already for 10 years it is an important, fully professional and full time stringquartet.
The box has divers, challenging and delightful music. Just like a heavenly tasting candybox should be: delicious! This music shows exactly how multifaced the Matangi Quartet is.

Een ware traktatie van het Matangi Quartet
Candybox is een smaakvolle selectie van strijkkwartetten om de 10e verjaardag van het Matangi Quartet te vieren. Onder de werken op dit album valt het 2e Strijkkwartet door hedendaagse Britse componist Karl Jenkins, maar ook muzikale traktaties van de Nederlander Charles (Chiel) Meijering − speciaal gecomponeerd voor deze viering − Revueltas, Suk, Turina, en stukken van Bartók en Vladimír Godár gearrangeerd voor strijkkwartet. Deze muziek past het kwartet als gegoten.

Het Matangi Quartet werd in 1999 opgericht door vier jonge musici die aan het Koninklijk Conservatorium van Den Haag en het Conservatorium van Rotterdam studeerden. In 2003 voltooiden zij de tweejarige fulltime opleiding aan de Nederlandse Strijkkwartet Academie. Het kwartet is vooral bekend in de Benelux en is dan ook een vaste gast bij de kamermuziekpodia van Nederland, maar ook daarbuiten doen zij het goed. Het ensemble werkte samen met uiteenlopende musici binnen de klassieke muziek onder wie Tania Kross, Ivo Janssen en Severin von Eckardstein. Ook speelde het samen met onder anderen het Schönberg Kwartet en het Brodsky Quartet,

Artist(s)

Matangi Quartet

The Matangi Quartet was founded in 1999 by four young musicians then studying at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and the Conservatory of Rotterdam. In 2003 Matangi completed the two-year, full-time course at the Netherlands String Quartet Academy under the direction of Stefan Metz (cellist, Orlando Quartet). At the Academy, the Matangi Quartet had the opportunity to take lessons from international renowned musicians, including the members of the Amadeus Quartet. The quartet also received intensive mentoring from Henk Guittart (violist, Schönberg Quartet) for several years. The Matangi Quartet has since developed into a regular performer in the Dutch chamber music scene and abroad. With their impassioned playing and smart presentation, Maria-Paula, Daniel, Karsten and Arno epitomize a new generation of...

The Matangi Quartet was founded in 1999 by four young musicians then studying at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and the Conservatory of Rotterdam. In 2003 Matangi completed the two-year, full-time course at the Netherlands String Quartet Academy under the direction of Stefan Metz (cellist, Orlando Quartet). At the Academy, the Matangi Quartet had the opportunity to take lessons from international renowned musicians, including the members of the Amadeus Quartet. The quartet also received intensive mentoring from Henk Guittart (violist, Schönberg Quartet) for several years.
The Matangi Quartet has since developed into a regular performer in the Dutch chamber music scene and abroad. With their impassioned playing and smart presentation, Maria-Paula, Daniel, Karsten and Arno epitomize a new generation of classical musicians. They are often characterized by words such as communicative, provocative and refreshingly versatile. The Matangi Quartet has shared the stage with various top-class classical musicians such as the Schönberg Quartet, the Royal Quartet, Miranda van Kralingen, Tania Kross, Ivo Janssen, Paolo Giacometti and Severin von Eckardstein.
The quartet has also been invited to perform in various festivals and concert series, including the Delft Chamber Music Festival, the Amsterdam Grachtenfestival, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Orlando Festival, the Robeco Summer Concert Series in Amsterdam, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Festival van Carthage in Tunisia, the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai and the International Conservatoire Festival in St Petersburg. Since 2005 the quartet has presented its own concert series in the ‘Beurs van Berlage’ in Amsterdam.
In 2002 Matangi was awarded the prestigious Kersjes van de Groenekan Award, an annual prize awarded to exceptional chamber music talent in the Netherlands. In 2008 the quartet won third prize at the International Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition in Weimar. The Matangi Quartet released several CDs issued by Challenge Records International which all received great critical acclaim. The latest releases were the CDs ‘Mendelssohn’ (2009) and ‘Candybox’ (2010). Together with viola da gamba player Ralph Rousseau the quartet won the Edison Audience Award 2009, for their CD ‘Chansons d’amour’ (Challenge Records 2008).
Matangi regularly participates in innovative crossover projects and has performed in collaboration with artists such as cabaretiers Herman van Veen and Youp van ’t Hek, bandoneon player Carel Kraayenhof, jazz trumpeter Eric Vloeimans, DJ Kypski, jazz vocalists Mathilde Santing and Renske Taminiau, singer songwriters Lory Liebermann and Tom McRae. These pioneering excursions beyond the borders of classical music have resulted in Matangi winning an enthusiastic new public for the string quartet. No less important, this has provided a source of inspiration for infusing performances of the rich classical repertoire built up over the past 250 years – from Haydn to Adès – with new élan. For essentially, the Matangi are focused on just one thing: letting the audience palpably experience the energy, passion and excitement that is inherent in all good music.
All four musicians perform on instruments of Dutch workmanship. The cello and first violin have been provided on loan by the Dutch National Musical Instrument Foundation.
Who is Matangi? Matangi is the Indian goddess of speech, music and writing. The vina that she carries in her hand is an instrument that produces deep sounds with pleasing overtones. Matangi transports her listeners with her playing on the strings of passion, fervour, love and ecstasy.

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Josef Suk

Maria-Paula Majoor

Daniel Torrico Menacho

Karsten Kleijer

Arno van der Vuurst

Composer(s)

Béla Bartók

Next to Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók was a third seminal innovator of European art music at the start of the twentieth century. Bartók, too, sought a way out of the deadlock of tonal music around 1900, and he found it in folk music. Initially, he tied in with the nationalistic tradition of Franz Liszt with his tone poem Kossuth, but eventually he found his own voice with the rediscovery of the music of Hungarian peasants. Together with Zoltán Kodály he was one of the first to apply the results of folkloric research into his own compositions. One major difference between him and composers of the 19th century, was that Bartók did not adjust to the system of tonality, but created his own musical idiom from folk music. Because of this, his composition style was flexible to other musical trends, without having to violate his own view points. For example, his two Violin sonates come close to Schoenberg's free expressionism, and after 1926 his music started to show neoclassicistic tendencies, comparable to Stravinsky's music. Bartók was not just interested in Hungarian folk music, but could appreciate musical folklore from all of the Balkan, Turkey and North-Africa as well.

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Joaquín Turina Pérez

Chiel Meijering

Chiel Meijering was born in Amsterdam. He studied composition with Ton de Leeuw, percussion under Jan Labordus and Jan Pustjens and piano at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music. He is one of the most performed Dutch composers.
Meijering has an enormous output of works. He has written over 900 compositions so far, for almost any instrumentation imaginable. A main focus has been on various small ensemble settings. Many of these pieces are performed regularly in the Netherlands and abroad and were written for renowned chamber music ensembles, such as the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet, the Mondriaan String Quartet, the Matangi String Quartet, the Sinfonietta Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Guitar Trio, the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble or German newcomer ensemble Spark. Since the 2000s, Meijering has developed a growing interest into opera. The overwhelming success of his Alzheimer Opera, which was premiered in January 2006 at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ marked his breakthrough with a larger theater audience. "Alzheimer" was quickly followed by several productions, such as "Styx", "De keizer is knetter", "Grenspost Zinnenwald" and "Blauwbaard". Meijering is currently working on a new opera for the Holland Opera Company, to be performed in 2011. Furthermore he has received a commission by the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble in cooperation with Concertgebouw Amsterdam for a short opera for children, which will be performed in front of about 5000 children within four days. Some of the songs in the opera will also be sung by the children as part of an educational project.
A very strong characteristic of Meijering's works is a large variety of styles. Without any difficulty, he seems to move between different musical worlds and genres and thus creates a different texture for each of his works. Some of them remind of pop, jazz or world music, others are written in a classical tradition or show avant-garde elements. Meijering is driven by spontaneity. All kinds of emotions and experiences that arise during a day, may directly flow into the composition he is working on. Sometimes he even uses accidents as a method and throws the dice for creating clusters. Meijerings works always have programmatic titles, sometimes funny or provocative or fooling around with toilet or sex humour. Examples include "I Hate Mozart" (for flute, alto saxophone, harp and violin), "I've Never Seen a Straight Banana" (for alto saxophone, marimba, piano, harp, and violin), "If the Camels Don't Get You, the Fatimas Must!" (for solo violin), "When the Cock Crowed His Warning" (for two recorders, viola, cello and piano), "GangBang" (for large orchestra and electric guitar) and "Background-Music for Non-Entertainment Use in Order to Cover Unwanted Noise" (for four saxophones). This philosophy goes back to the 1970s, when he tried to separate himself from the all to pragmatic and dry practice of most of his colleaugues, naming their pieces "Sonata No. 33" or "Symphonie No. 15". Now that he has reached the middle of his fifties, Meijering's titles - as well as his music - are experiencing a shift to the more romantic and poetic side: "NightbeastCry" (for toy piano), "The house with paper walls" (for viola and harp) or "Blue shadows flower into light" (for saxophone orchestra and two pianos).
Meijering has found a large public not only in the Netherlands, but also on international stages. His music shows high artistry and still remains catchy and accessible for a broad audience. This is a very rare combination in the contemporary music scene and has helped Meijering to establish himself not only within the serious music circle, but also and foremost in the international classical music scene. Even Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands outet herself as a huge lover of Meijering's music, when she ordered one of his compositions for a festive concert on the occasion of her 60th birthday. Without any doubt, Meijering can be described as one of the most popular and famous voices of contemporary Dutch music.

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Vladimír Godár

Karl Jenkins

The career of jazz musician and composer Karl Jenkins is continually shifting between classical and popular. In his early years he was principal oboist of the youth orchestra of Wales. However, he became interested in jazz to such an extent that the traded his oboe for a saxophone. A commercial tune for Delta Airlnes became an unexpected hit. This sudden popularity inspired Jenkins to compose for the concert hall. One could characterize the style of Jenkins’ oratorios as pop music, but modeled on symphonic music. He can be compared to the ‘classical’ Paul McCartney, although Jenkins has much better grasp of the general structure. The liberality with which Jenkins adapts the ancient Christian texts as he sees fit is also...

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Press

''De Tulipa Matangi is vernoemd naar het jubilerende kwartet. Maria Paula Majoor:'Het is debiel zo mooi recht als die tulp blijft'.'' ''The Tulipa Matangi is named after the jubilee quartet. Maria Paula Majoor, "It's so beautiful straight moron as this tulip remains'' Paul Janssen Luister september/oktober 2010
Luister, 01-10-2010

''Das Matangi Quartet schenkt allen hundert Prozent Aufmerksamkeit, lässt die Bonbons rollen und drehen, seh zum Hörvergnügen des Musikfreunds, der sich mit dieser CD eine der skurrilsten Quartett-CDs im Katalog in seinen Besitz bringen kann!'' ''Het Matangi Kwartet geeft alles honderd procent aandacht, ze laten de snoepjes draaien en rollen, bekijk deze CD met het luisterplezier van de muziekliefhebber en dan kan deze CD een van de bizarste kwartet CD's van zijn eigen bezit worden!'' ''The Matangi Quartet gives all a hundred percent the attention, the candy turns and rolls, if you look at the album from the listening pleasure of the music lover point of you, this album can make it to one of the most bizarre quartet CDs in your possession!'' Pizzicato june 2010
Pizzicato, 01-6-2010

"Het speelt miniaturen beter op cd, lange stukken beter in de zaal en hopelijk, zolang het bestaat, op beide podia enigszins bedaagde klassieke muziek met de prettige energie van sommige moderne muziek." "They play the miniatures best on CD, longer pieces better in the concert hall and hopefully, as long as it exists, on both platforms rather old classical music with the pleasant energy of some of the modern music." Emanuel Overbeeke Luister mei 2010
Luister, 01-5-2010

Het jonge Matangi strijkkwartet is een van die succesvolle, ondernemende ensembles, voortkomen uit de Haagse Conservatoriumschool. De zesde Challenge cd van het ensemble is al even verrassend als het voorafgaande vijftal. Eigenlijk steeds hebben de Hagenezen net een streepje voor omdat ze minder stijfjes, vol zwier en overtuigingskracht ageren. Heel stimulerend allemaal. The young Matangi String Quartet is one of the successful, enterprising ensembles arising from the Haagse Conservatory School. This is the sixth Challenge CD of the ensemble and it is as surprising as the previous five. The people from Den Haag have a advantage, because they are not stiff, full of verve and persuasiveness. It is very stimulating. Musicalfeiten - June 2010
Musicalfeiten, 01-5-2010

Zij noemden hem ‘Candybox’, verpakten hem in een doosje en deden er Engelse drop in. Niet alleen om te verwijzen naar de titel, maar ook naar de inhoud van het album, want dat is even gevarieerd als het veelkleurige snoepgoed. They call it "Candybox", wrapped in a box with English drop in it. Not only to refer to the title, but also the content of the album, because that is as varied as the multi-colored candy. Rinus van der Heijden - Jazzenzo - Mei 2010
Jazzenzo, 01-5-2010

Op de nieuwe cd, uitgebracht ter gelegenheid van het tienjarig bestaan, speelt het zeer verschillende hedendaagse snoepjes. Niet alleen de bijgeleverde snoepjes smaken uitstekend, ook de muzikale snoepjes smaken naar meer: pittige muziek pittig uitgevoerd met de juiste balans tussen rust en opwinding. In de romantische werken bewijst het viertal dat ook dit repertoire zeer goed aankan. On the new CD, released because of the tenth anniversary, the Matangi quartet plays very different contemporary sweets. Not only the sweets are great, also the musical sweets are perfect: spicy music spicy performed with the right balance between relaxation and excitement. In the romantic works, the foursome proves that they can handle this repertoire very well. Boudisque classique - May 2010
boudisque classique, 01-5-2010

Onder het motto 'goede muziek is goede muziek, ongeacht de stijl en genre', vermengen ze op Candybox muziek van componisten in verschillende soorten en maten, zoals ook Engelse drop een allegaartje van smaken is. With the slogan "good music is good music regardless the style or genre, they blend the music of composers in various shapes and sizes on the Candybox, just like the fact that English drop is a mix of everything. Het Parool - April 2010
Het Parool, 01-4-2010

De versnapering die het water echt in de mond doet lopen, is echter het vlekkeloze samenspel van de Matangi's zelf. Samenspel zonder toegevoegde smaak- en kleurstoffen, dat reikt van de energieke raspklanken. The appetizer makes your mouth water, because of the perfect play of the Matangi themselves. Combined play with no added flavoring and coloring, which reaches energetic rasping sounds. Joep Christenhusz - Klassieke zaken - april 2010.
Klassieke zaken, 01-4-2010