The Marmen Quartet: an outstanding debut album
The Marmen Quartet (from left) Bryony Gibson-Cornish, Johannes Marmen, Sinéad O’Halloran and Laia Valentin Braun
Photo credit: Marco Borggreve
In just over a decade, the Marmen Quartet has established itself as one of the most exciting young string quartets on the world stage. London-based, these four outstanding musicians –violinists Johannes Marmen from Sweden and Swiss-born Laia Valentin Braun, New Zealander Bryony Gibson-Cornish, violist, and Irish cellist Sinéad O'Halloran – have won prestigious international quartet competitions in Bordeaux and Banff and toured extensively to festivals and concert stages in Europe and beyond. In January they released their debut album on the highly respected BIS label.
Their choices of two string quartets by 20th century Hungarian composer György Ligeti, separated by Béla Bartók’s fourth quartet, confirm their reputation as crack musicians and courageous risk-takers. Ligeti’s marvellous 1st Quartet, Métamorphoses nocturnes, has eight short, contrasted movements. The atmospheric writing is no surprise to those who know Ligeti’s music from the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey and other Kubrick movies.
The Marmen Quartet capture all the drama in this music, with moods careering from creepy to wistful or fierce. A wild frenetic ride turns to an elegant, wry waltz and on to sobbing lyricism. Bartók-influenced foot-stomping folkiness gives way to the ghostly harmonics, angular lines and savage outbursts of a final, fleet prestissimo. The intensity of the playing makes for edge-of-the-seat listening, the musicians giving their all with energy, pace and a virtuosic range of dynamics and timbre.
Next comes Bartók’s string quartet from 1928, as uncompromising for its time as Ligeti’s later modernism. Bartok’s writing is more traditional in phrase and movement structure, but his radical use of dissonance and modern tonalities, though blended with the folk music he loved, offended the Marxist leaders of Hungary. The individual, colourful and engaging character of the music has ensured its place in today’s standard repertoire, and the Marmen Quartet use beautiful flexibility to reveal Bartók’s subtleties.
In Ligeti’s second Quartet, written in 1968, movement titles are explicit: “with mechanical precision”, “furioso, brutale, tumultuoso”, “with delicacy”. After fleeing the Hungarian Communist regime in the late 1950’s, Ligeti used what he called “micropolyphony”. “You cannot actually hear the polyphony,” he explained. “You hear an impenetrable texture, like a densely woven cobweb.”
Musicologist Arnold Whittall, who wrote the brilliant sleeve notes, describes the second quartet’s “seething continuity”. Composer and musicians exploit contrasts of foreground and background effects, and the listener is on edge, anticipating explosions and chaos. Finally, all disappears upwards in ethereal glissandi. With a final quiet cello growl, the fascinating work - and an outstanding debut album - is over.
Marmen Quartet Ligeti String Quartets Nos 1 & 2, Bartók String Quartet No 4 (BIS) More information here
You can read a profile of Bryony Gibson-Cornish, New Zealand violist with the Marmen Quartet, and the story of her serendipitous acquisition of a remarkable 1610 Brothers Amati viola, here.
This album review was first published in the NZ Listener, issue March 1, 2025