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In 1979, after a three year long compositional crisis, Luigi Nono returned to composition with a series of works which seemed to be radically different from anything he had made in the preceding three decades. One of these works is the string quartet Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima, which was premiered by the LaSalle Quartet in 1980. Few postwar works have been commented – and praised – as much as this quartet. Only a year after the premiere, Heinz-Klaus Metzger called it Nono’sturning point, and thirty years later, David Metzer looked back at it as one of the works from around 1980 that introduced a new phase of musical modernism. [source]

Diotima was Socrates’ teacher, and is associated with the concept of time. Performed by the Arditti String Quartet, this music is guided by lines from Holderlin’s famous poem, which are present only as an unspoken meditation and guidepost written into the score in 52 places. Nono poses the fundamental questions “Where am I, and who am I?” by examining old music and memories from the distant past as producers of both pain and hope. The composer seeks to “externalize as fully as possible that which has been internalized….” He concludes, “That is what matters today.” [source]

COMPOSER : Luigi Nono

QUARTUAR ARDETTI:
Rohan de Saram – Cello
Levine Andrade – Viola
David Alberman – Violin
Irvine Arditti – Violin

Recorded in Cologne, July 1990 and released in 1991 on Montaigne.