Although born in Belgrade, Isidora Žebeljan spent much of her childhood in the region that gave us Bartók and Kurtág. That’s no surprise, considering the spiky beauty and joy in folk-dance that infuses her chamber music. Žebeljan’s mature writing for quartet is full of texture and restless detail, and the Brodsky Quartet have long championed it.
Their collection of seven works begins with the exuberant Polomka Quartet, in which dance episodes pile up with irresistibly increasing urgency. With soprano Aneta Ilić, they make something vivid and ultimately powerful of the cycle New Songs of Lada. Žebeljan herself is the pianist in the haunting Sarabande and in Pep It Up, an “android’s reverie” in which it seems an entire drum kit is slowly thrown at the soprano, who vocalises wordlessly over trance-like, rocking chords. It’s the earliest work on the disc, and unfortunately the longest – it jars next to the subtlety of the rest.
