The three string quartets written to date by Joan Magrané Figuera and featured on this first monographic CD by the young thirty-something are heard under the bows of the Quatuor Diotima, one of the most committed phalangesin the world of contemporary music.

The sound world of Catalan composer Joan Magrané, particularly prolific (more than eighty works are already in his catalog) joins that of poetry and voice, which leave their mark, even in instrumental music. Such is the case of his first string quartet, Madrigal, written in 2012 and revised in 2019, which gives its title to the album: intimate, refined music, attached to timbre and breath, which demands particularly attentive listening. " By nature, my musical thinking tends towards the miniature and the detailed," warns the composer. The one-piece piece proceeds in small motifs, supple inflections, almost plaintive figures entrusted to the four instruments whose trembling, troubled sounds (almost constant use of tremolo) convey their extreme fragility. The use of extended playing techniques (on the bridge, glissades, circular rubbing of the bow) combine determined pitches and noisy components. In the final minutes of the piece, a quotation from Gesualdo emerges, furtively and immediately erased. 

" This way of invoking the ancients by borrowing structural models is something I stole from my teacher. Stefano Gervasoni "admits Magrané , who studied with the Italian master at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris. Alguns cants orfics (Some Orphic Songs), the title of his second string quartet (2013), refers to the Canti orfici (1914) by Italian poet Dino Campana (1885-1932), another literary framework on which the string quartet is built. With the same delicate complexion, the four-voice writing becomes more frenzied, reaching thresholds of tension, with that attraction to the high notes that we find again in the third quartet. Specific mutes in the center of the piece filter the timbre of the strings, which quote a passage from a sonata by the Venetian Dario Castello (1602-1631). The texture is one of incomparable sensuality, whose lines gradually fade away in a slow process of immersion of the material until its last breath. 

The manner is more vehement in Era, string quartet no. 3, shaken by nervous, noisy bow strokes that flow through the different instruments in a medium-low register and a material full of asperities. This contrasts with a much more serene ascending line, as if magnetized by the high register where the four sonorities merge. The piece dialecticizes the opposition between these two irreducible worlds. The return of spiccatos and other muscular gettatos punctuates the various phases of this ascent, carried ever higher by the shivering tremolos of the bows, right up to the threshold of audibility. As in the preceding quartet, the sound of the strings is filtered and decimated, becoming a breath before disappearing into silence.

Diotima 's finesse and precision of playing, combined with the sensitive rendering of matter (the emotional tremor of sound), render the delicate iridescence of sonorities and conjure up the poetic aura of a universe meticulously explored by a composer who makes us feel at every moment the intrinsic fragility of existence and of things. The meticulous recording by Barcelona-based label Neu Record (HD stereo + 5.1 surround) offers the listener optimal listening conditions. 

Michèle Tosi

Joan Magrané Figuera (b. 1988): Madrigal, string quartet no. 1; Era, string quartet no. 3; Alguns cants òrfics, string quartet no. 2. Quatuor Diotima: Yung-Peng Zhao, Léo Marillier, violin; Franck Chevalier, viola; Pierre Morlet, cello. CD Neu Records Neu 0017; bar code 8308072022121; recorded in 3D format in the Mozart Hall of the Zaragosa Auditorium in April 2022; text English / Catalan / Italian; 43′.

Photo © Daniel Campbell
Photo © Mario Maher