The Strad Recommends: United Strings of Europe: Hommages

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: May 2025

Description: A crack ensemble proves its mettle in highly varied fare

Musicians: United Strings of Europe/Julian Azkoul

Works: Golijov: Last Round. Mustonen: Nonetto II; Apotheosis. Stravinsky: Apollon musagète (arr.Azkoul). Tabakov: Organum Light

Catalogue number: BIS BIS-2739 (SACD) 

Hommages both honours and re-evaluates the past in a cleverly constructed programme that ranges from Stravinsky’s myth of Apollo, performed here in a surprisingly effective arrangement for string sextet, to the catchy and highly charged tangos of Gardel and Piazzolla, reimagined in Golijov’s Last Round. In the latter work, rhythmically edgy articulation defines the playing of the United Strings of Europe, which emulates the pulsating energy of Buenos Aires street tangos filtered through a kaleidoscope of changing patterns. This ensemble is fantastically characterised and flawlessly virtuosic, as witness the second-movement ‘Muertes del Angel’ – poignantly reflective, but also delving into the darker, more intense side of the tango.

Tabakova’s Organum Light graces a Renaissance organum style with bare intervals adorned by expressive snippets of melodic line – exquisite and atmospheric music given an outstanding performance. Stravinsky’s linear and economic style can sustain the reduction to string sextet arrangement – perfectly capturing the composer’s spare yet potent invention in Apollon musagète.

Superb performances serve Azkoul’s solutions brilliantly, from ‘Naissance d’Apollon’, to the ‘Coda’, where the ensemble is immaculately rigorous and gloriously lucid. Mustonen celebrates various styles, most eloquently the heritage of Schubert’s String Quintet in the poignant Adagio of his Nonet, before the frenzied invention of the dazzlingly moto perpetuo Vivacissimo which is delivered here with stunning precision.

JOANNE TALBOT