Quatra Duo: Painted Music
Navona Records

Charmed during the past few years by the music of Folias Duo, the flute-and-guitar project of married couple Carmen Maret and Andrew Bergeron, I'm seduced all over again by Quatra Duo, featuring guitarist Jeff LaQuatra and flutist Michelle Stanley. While they're also a husband-and-wife duo with a sound comparable to their counterparts, Quatra Duo doesn't perform original material but instead works by others, many of them personally commissioned. Of course there's no need to choose between the two outfits; there's room enough for both and no one's more the beneficiary than the listener.

Though the two have performed together since 1998 and are both professors of their respective instruments at Colorado State University, Painted Music is their debut recording under the Quatra Duo name, with a release on Centaur Records by Stanley preceding it by fourteen years. Works by four contemporary composers, three living and one recently deceased, appear, with multi-part pieces by James McGuire and Bryan Johanson (both of them Quatra Duo commissions, McGuire's was a Christmas gift by LaQuatra for his then soon-to-be wife) followed by an Osvaldo Golijov work and a three-parter by Phillip Houghton (1954-2017). In all cases the pieces were composed specifically for the flute-and-guitar combination.

Seduce is the correct word, by the way, as the combination of flute and acoustic guitar produces an exceptionally lovely sound; adding to its appeal, the instruments' timbres are fundamentally contrasting yet nonetheless complementary. Stanley and LaQuatra play impeccably throughout the release, and as much pleasure is derived from their technical virtuosity as the compositions. Nothing other than the pure, beautiful sounds of the flute and guitar are heard on the recording and nothing more is needed when the finesse of their playing is so rewarding.

No better argument is needed in support of the project than McGuire's Suite for Flute and Guitar, a splendid piece whose six short movements reference multiple genres. The mysterious aura of the flute bolsters the enchantment of the material, as do the clarity, control, and precision of the duo's playing. From the joyful “Festive” and breezy “Dance” to the lovely “Lullaby,” Stanley's unerring command of pitch and vibrato helps make McGuire's melodically piece as enticing as it is. For Painted Music, his first contribution to the flute-and-guitar repertoire, Johanson drew for inspiration from images created by Swiss-born artist Paul Klee (1879-1940). Although it's recommended that the image of each work be viewed in tandem with its corresponding movement, the work suffers little when absorbed as music only. “Strong Dream – Nocturne” is suitably haunting in its purely musical presentation, the ponderous “Ancient Harmony – Passacaglia” as time-transcending as centuries-old ruins, and “Bird Garden – Bagatelle” a rapturous dialogue between flute and guitar.

Written for guitarist David Leisner and flutist Eugenia Zuckerman, Golijov's Fish Tale presents a surreal, eleven-minute exercise that traces a fish's journey from ocean to fishbowl and beyond. In accordance with that adventurous itinerary, the music encompasses a number of different moods and styles, with samba, Brazilian folk music, and even an African thumb piano reference worked into the design. Contemplative moments alternate with frenzied episodes as the music follows the fish's journey, the adventure calling to mind Paddle-to-the-Sea, the book by Holling C. Holling that became an indelible National Film Board of Canada film. In a piece that's never less than engaging, the most affecting part of Fish Tale comes near the end in the form of a slow, sensitively rendered waltz.

November 2020