Q2 Music: Humor and Fiendish Difficulty in Spektral Quartet's 'Serious Business'

But for all the easy delight these works afford the listener, they are from a compositional and performance standpoint works of great difficulty. Many Many Cadences is a brain-frying overload of musical information, the level of sheer musical skill required to execute The Ancestral Mousetrap effectively is monumental, Hack would be a nuanced, well-structured piece even if it weren't also an illuminating essay on the music of American speech, and the composer of "The Joke" has some serious chops, too.

This is repertoire that makes serious demands on the performer, and offers serious rewards for the listener. It just happens to be a lot of fun to listen to, as well.

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