Spektral’s execution is so microscopically precise that it gives it a voltaic momentum.
…
A crawling, leaden pressure on the strings creates the white noise at the beginning of Enigma, like a raspy, pitchless and formless molten state from which something must be created. That something is an unstable block chord — what Armbrust calls the “chorale-like writing” — that appears and later returns, dovetailing with the white noise. Spread out among dissonant intervals that include major and minor 13ths, the harmony swells and recedes with unison bow strokes from the full quartet. The execution with no vibrato makes for a chilly sonic atmosphere.
The brooding chord later progresses in stepwise motion and is interspersed with intimate, yet unsettling inklings of rustling leaves, papery textures, and whispery swooshing winds that evoke a prehistoric barren landscape. The shifting textures suggest a recurring change of perspective through Enigma, allowing the listener to traverse incorporeally from interstellar dust at the dawn of time to today’s melting polar ice caps. Later in the movement, the tremolo bowing sounds like a distant pulsar beaming across unimaginable distances, with an electrified spark. Spektral’s execution is so microscopically precise that it gives it a voltaic momentum. Fingernail pizzicatos — indicated in the score — create an electronic-sounding clicking that contrasts heavily with the more conventional writing.
But this is no mere collection of eerie sound effects — Enigma evolves as the mysterious noises gradually blend into the chordal structures. In the third movement, particularly, multiple layers of sound spin centripetally into harmoniously stable grounds, only to ebb away at last into the pitchlessness of the opening. With that deceptively simple approach, Anna upends the string quartet genre and takes the listener on a nearly psychedelic trip into the unknown.
And yet, what is most disquieting about Enigma is that its most harrowing and despairing moments — contrasted by those elusive, not-so-consoling chorale progressions — make the listening experience uncomfortably familiar in our time. Whether a dirge for the countless Covid-related deaths that could have been avoided, or for the depletion of our natural resources, it is a death knell for the 21st century cast in a centuries-old musical form. Listen with the lights off.