Schoenfield Recordings

This summer the Ciompi Quartet brought a long-awaited project to fruition: recording a disc of Paul Schoenfield's two String Quartets. We have been playing his first quartet, "Tales From Chelm," since the mid-nineties, having introduced it to audiences at series around the country, at summer festivals—even at Weill Hall in New York. In 2003 we added "Memoirs" (Paul's second quartet) to our touring repertoire, playing it frequently, even as far afield as Albania.

The Ciompi's special relationship to the composer and to his two quartets (despite the exceptional beauty of the two works, no other quartet plays them—yet!) made the recording a natural choice. Paul, a boyhood friend of cellist Fred Raimi, came to Duke for a few days and helped us to clarify some remaining performance issues.

The sound engineer was Joel Gordon of Boston, who arrived fresh from halfway around the world—Uzbekistan, to be exact—where he had just finished a marathon session recording indigenous masterpieces of central Asian music. The mix of personalities produced a very promising collaboration. Watch this space as plans develop for a release date and label.