Kronos Quartet
Plays Sigur Rós (MP3s)

307452

Track Listing

Click tracks with speaker icon to listen

1	Flugufrelsarinn (Sigur Rós, arr. S. Prutsman)	8:22
2	The Star-Spangled Banner (Trad., arr. S. Prutsman after Jimi Hendrix)	3:41

News & Reviews

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Kronos Quartet's New Album Features "Exquisitely Recorded, Radiant" Performance of Martynov "Masterpiece" (LA Times)

Kronos Quartet's new album features the work of contemporary Russian composer Vladimir Martynov. The Los Angeles Times calls his Schubert-Quintet (Unfinished) a "masterpiece. The performance, exquisitely recorded, is radiant." The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette calls it a "hauntingly beautiful work, a masterwork ... This is an album brimming with warmth and emotion, of flesh and spirit, that is romantic and beautifully played." The album comes "highly recommended" from All Music, which says: "Nonesuch's sound is clean, warmly immediate, and vibrant." The Winnipeg Free Press says "the Kronos crew deliver a stunning exploration that sends chills."
Monday, January 30, 2012

Carnegie Hall Announces 2012–2013 Season, Featuring Performances, Works by Several Nonesuch Artists

Carnegie Hall has announced its 2012–13 season, and featured among the performers taking the esteemed hall's stages are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Kronos Quartet, Richard Goode, Dawn Upshaw, and Alarm Will Sound, as well as world and New York premiere performances of works by Steve Reich, Timothy Andres, and Donnacha Dennehy. In addition, John Adams will lead a Professional Training Workshop for emerging talents through Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute.

Read More News About Kronos Quartet

About this Album

The two pieces included on Kronos Quartet Plays Sigur Rós have both been staples of Kronos’ live concerts for several years: an arrangement of Icelandic experimental rock group Sigur Rós’s “Flugufrelsarinn” (“The Fly Freer”) and an arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“I first heard Sigur Rós in 2000 and it was thrilling,” said David Harrington, Kronos founder and artistic director. “I could not stop listening to them. Kronos had to play their music. Sigur Rós create entire universes with their sound: imaginary places populated by desires and colors and feelings that belong solely to the fleetingly understood realm of music.”

Kronos commissioned an arrangement of Sigur Rós' composition “Flugufrelsarinn” (Icelandic for “The Fly Freer”), from the Ágætis Byrjun album in 2002. In its original, sung version, “Flugufrelsarinn” relates a parable of salvation and sacrifice, in which an unnamed narrator tries to rescue helpless flies in a lake from the jaws of the approaching salmon. In Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement for Kronos, the work takes on a new delicacy while losing none of its essential mystery.

The Quartet has been playing its Prutsman/Kronos version of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s famous Woodstock interpretation—in concert since 2003. The Los Angeles Times called a recent performance of the piece, “a fiery political protest that recalled [Kronos’] roots exploring classic rock.” Although it has always been an audience favorite, the group had never released a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before this digital-only release.