Here comes the sun — again.
Alive to a radiant democratic spirit taking hold in Europe and alongside a new appreciation of the natural world, the 40-year-old Joseph Haydn composed six revolutionary string quartets in 1772. The Opus 20 quartets gave independence to the ensemble’s four individual voices, revealed the string quartet potential for uniquely intimate expression and surveyed the wider world as the irrepressibly sneaky Haydn slipped in hidden references to folk song and dance. Their radiance inspired a Dutch publisher to put an etching of the rising sun on the cover of the scores, and they’ve been known ever since as the “Sun” quartets.
A little over 200 years later, a 40-something Terry Riley made his first venture into the string quartet with “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector.” The composer who launched Minimalism with “In C” had over the years become a planetary music pack rat, and he found the…
