Lachenmann: The String Quartets review – Quatuor Diotima draw you into his strange and compelling soundworld

Quatuor Diotima
(Pentatone)
The instruments mutter and shriek, dissolving the line between noise and music on this authoritative and fascinating disc

Helmut Lachenmann is 90 this week, but the event has gone largely unmarked in the UK, where his music remains little understood and rarely performed. Elsewhere in Europe he is recognised as one of the important and influential composers of our time, whose music has opened up a wholly new sound world with its forensic exploration of the way instruments are played and the further possibilities they might offer.

At the heart of that exploration has been Lachenmann’s three string quartets – Gran Torso, composed in 1971-72 and revised in 1988, Reigen Seliger Geister (Round of Blessed Spirits, 1989), and Grido (Cry, 2002) – which exploit every part of the string instruments, from scrolls to tailpieces, for their sound possibilities. They mutter and shriek, slide and scrape, dissolving any distinction between what is traditionally noise and what music, yet always following formal schemes that are very much musical.