Berio - Sincronie for String Quartet (1964) (with score)

Berio’s second string quartet is remarkable for its use of extended techniques. Only rarely does he use conventional string sounds; when they do occur, the effect is to spotlight them even more. Otherwise, pulverised sounds alternate with glissandi, development is scarcely perceptible; instead, the impression is of an extremely refined succession of alienated sounds, making the string quartet seem like a single instrument. "By the time of Sincronie ... Berio had acquired a much clearer sense of how his music would be shaped and the grammar it would use. The structure is relatively easy to follow - a series of contrasting episodes with the hint of variation form behind them, capped by a distinct coda - and the gestures it contains are bolder, more obviously dramatic. It is music that has much in common with the series of Sequenzas for solo instruments that Berio had begun in the late 1950s, and like those pieces Sincronie pushes at the technical boundaries of what the four string instruments can do." (Andrew Clements - The Guardian)