Consumer Guide

GEORGE TSONTAKIS: Four Symphonic Quartets (Koch) Lord knows I'm no Uptown orchestra fan, but Tsontakis's heroic, nostalgia-free romanticism alwaystorpedoes my attempts to dislike it. There's something Beethovenian and impressionist at once about the way these Symphonic Quartets (based nonvocally on Eliot's Four Quartets) pile motive upon motive in irresistibly slow climaxes. With the Monte Carlo Philharmonic lovingly conducted by James De Priest, the bouyant brass float in a wavy ocean of string and wind flurries, building up a supple, nuanced, dissonance-tinged tonality that John Adams, John Harbison, and company can only envy. Tsontakis knows a secret that most of his orchestra-league colleagues don't: music has to breathe. A

Addresses

Asphodel, P.O. Box 51, Chelsea Station, New York, NY 10113; Audio ArtKive, c/o Table of the Elements, P.O. Box 5524, Atlanta, GA 31107; content, Glafsered, S-516 95 Malsryd, Sweden; Malted Media, RD 2 Box 2770, Cox Brook Road, Northfield, VT 05663; Mode, P.O. Box 1026, New York, NY 10116; Monroe Street, 666 Fifth Avenue, No. 232, New York, NY 10103; New Tone, c/o Robi Droli, Strada Roncaglia 16, 15040 San Germano (AL), Italy; Starkland, P.O. Box 2190, Boulder, CO 80306; Tzadik, 61 East 8th Street, Suite 126, New York, NY 10003; XI, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, 224 Centre Street, New York, NY 10013.