VSTO (string quartet)

VSTO is a string quartet by Alvin Curran. It was released on the album Schtyx (CRI: 1994), performed by a quartet led by David Abel of the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio.[1]

Written for choreographer Trisha Brown, Curran writes: "As students, Elliott Carter said we could do anything but write octaves; here the octave rules like Gurdjieff. It is an interval that goes absolutely nowhere even when it goes up and down..."[1] Richard Friedman elaborates, "Octave consonance trades with calm dissonance, and even some twisted shtetl tunes [klezmer]," and quotes Curran: "there is nothing to understand here...just let it happen."[2] Another review wonders about the specific location: "Russian (Ukrainian? Polish?)"[3]

The original piece, written in memory of Giacinto Scelsi (house address: Via San Teodoro Otto, Rome), is from 1988, a revision from 1994, and is now in version 2.5.[2] Version 1 lasts eighteen minutes and was premiered by the Silesian String Quartet in Berlin in 1989; the long version (2) was premiered in 1993 by the Soldier String Quartet in New York to accompany Brown's Another Story as in Falling; and version 2.5 was premiered by the Arditti Quartet in 2009 and lasts twenty-four minutes.[4]

The piece, for acoustic quartet, originated in a piece for electrically enhanced string quartet and computer-controlled synthesizer (For Four Or More/Four or Five) premiered by the Kronos Quartet in Darmstadt in 1986.[4]