NY Times: "Kronos Quartet revels collaboratively in music from Azerbaijan"

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, now lives in Berlin and writes music that vacillates between dense Western chromaticism, Azeri folk influences and a quasi-mystical style all her own. The first half of the program was devoted to her works. "Mugam Sayagi" (1993), the string quartet that opened the program, begins and ends with a simple, repeating figure for cello alone. Between those signposts, the music wanders widely, through vigorously bowed ensemble passages, dance figures in which pizzicato and bowing alternate, and others that have the musicians playing percussion instead of their usual instruments.

Ms. Ali-Zadeh played her "Music for Piano" (1989-97), in which a necklace thrown onto the piano's strings yielded the sound of a zither and piano duet. The dialogues etched from these timbres were remarkable, as were Ms. Ali-Zadeh's shifts from modal, folkish writing to full-bodied Lisztian thunder.

The Kronos players and Ms. Ali-Zadeh collaborated on her "Apsheron Quintet" (2001), a work that combined the exoticism and variety of "Mugam Sayagi" with the chromatic spikiness of the solo piano piece.

The second half of the program included two works by Rahman Asadollahi, an Iranian composer of Azeri descent who lives in Los Angeles. His "Mugam Beyati Shiraz" (2004) had the members of the quartet — particularly its two violinists, David Harington and John Sherba — playing modal melodies with the inflections of Middle Eastern vocal lines.

Mr. Asadollahi, on the garmon, an accordion, and Henrick Avoyan, a percussionist, joined the quartet for "Garmon Yanar Odlaryurduna" (2004), a lively score that sounded, at odd moments, like everything from the soundtrack music to 1980's French comedies to free-spirited dances and Arabic vocal music. At its best, the zesty performance had the quality of a multicultural jam, and it clearly struck a chord with the audience, much of which leapt to its feet in an explosive ovation the second it ended.