Premiered earlier this year, Bushra El-Turk’s new work celebrates singers from the Arab Cultural Renaissance. It resonates with Gesualdo’s tortured madrigal, and Schubert’s searing quartet references one of his most harrowing songs. Comfort is at hand, however. Originally conceived for the ondes martenot; repurposed in the Quartet for the End of Time, Messiaen’s Oraison contemplates the eternal.
Championing the new, cherishing the old is all in a day’s work for the multi-prize-winning, Amsterdam-based quartet. From Machaut and Pérotin to John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, its repertoire is ear-opening. Not that the ‘canon’ is elbowed aside. Gramophone relished the Quartet’s Haydn for its ‘virtuosity, finesse, and coursing energy’; while for the Irish Times, the Dudoks’ artistry is ‘revelatory’, adding up to ‘a kind of musical spring clean’.
