The versatile and virtuosic Brodsky Quartet have collaborated with Bjork, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, and Anne Sofie von Otter. Now they bring us three of the most challenging string pieces of the modern classical repertoire. Dave Brubeck specially expanded his “Chromatic Fantasy for String Quartet” into four movements for the Quartet. The concluding movement, the 13-minute “Chaconne,” is a whirlpool of jazz and classical approaches. Igor Stravinsky’s “1920 Concertino” packs as much variation into seven minutes as Brubeck does into four movements! Kurt Weill’s “String Quartet No. 1, Op. 8″ offers its own exaggerated leaps of composition before resolving itself — and the entire disc — into the much more sublime “Choralephantasie.” Classical music is definitely not dead! – Tom Schulte
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