With KUARTETS, the Italian composer Kristian Sensini presents his first solo album apart from his film music albums, although his film music stylisms are also present here. For this album, which came about partly thanks to crowdfunding, he has rewritten new and older compositions for a string quartet (if not already composed for four strings). Unfortunately, the result suffers from the playing time, because after 65 minutes of chamber music string music, I felt “oversaturated” in terms of string sounds. The opening piece “Bycicle Promenade” is really great – full of movement and playfulness. It’s a pleasure to listen to the other pieces, but after the first third of the album I wished for a few new sound colours. It is interesting that Kristian Sensini has formulated thoughts, reflections and background stories for each piece on his website (unfortunately not included in the CD package, but can be found here: https://www.kristiansensini.com/kuartets/). These explanations make the listening experience more multi-dimensional and provide some guidance.
Among other things, I listened to the piece “John & Jerry” with increased attention when I read that here he has broken up and combined chord sequences from STAR WARS and STAR TREK. Also in the case of “La Stanza di Vanni” – an Italian play on words with “Hans” and “Zimmer” – with which he pays tribute to the Hollywood composer. I was not able to really hear out these roots, as I must admit somewhat ashamedly, but this textual introduction gave me a more specific view of the compositions in this case as well as in many of the other pieces, which I appreciated very much. Others, however, may want to engage with the music in a completely unbiased way.
In his remarks, Sensini also writes that some of the compositions were originally written for solo piano or for a 5-piece jazz ensemble. If the original versions had been included in this album, the album would certainly have won in terms of variety, in my opinion. But perhaps recordings of these will follow at a later date…
