some of the best music out there

If by chance you’re not familiar with Bartók’s six string quartets, I envy you your first encounter with them. I was just discussing them via email with Tim Morton, who tends to like all the same classical music that I do and vice versa. I’ve usually listened to the famous Takacs Quartet version, but Tim thinks the Tokyo Quartet version is even better. The bits I’ve sampled on YouTube do seem excellent.

It’s one of those great remembered scenes from my youth. Packing my dorm room in Santa Fe on the last night on campus my freshman year. One floor above me is a graduating senior, nice guy, with his friends over having a small party on his balcony to celebrate his graduation the next day. He has something playing on his stereo, and it’s unlike anything I’ve heard before. For some reason no other dorm rooms are playing any music, so this piece has a monopoly as it echoes over the mountainous campus with its sweet piñon fragrance.

My recollection is that I’d been planning to go out and do something, but the music froze me in place for about 20 minutes. I was about to go up and ask N. what he was playing, when opportunely enough, someone came along at ground level and shouted the question up to him before I could do it. It was Bartók’s First Quartet.

When I got home that summer, one of the first things I did was check the whole set of LP’s out of the local college library near where I lived, and it’s probably been some of my most-played music for the past 24 years.

Tim refers to the “grinning skull” quality of the Bartok’s quartets, and that’s a nice description.