'Forgive Us For' by Kronos Quartet
For more than 50 years, Kronos Quartet has represented the hipster side of classical-music accessibility. Whether collaborating with composers like Terry Riley, interpreting Thelonious Monk, or enhancing the ambitions of pop artisans like Nelly Furtado, the foursome has rarely stood still long enough to get dusty or rusty.
On Forgive Us For, its second LP of 2025, Kronos continues the international exploration it’s undertaken on myriad projects extending from Poland to South Africa to Mexico. This time, violinists David Harrington and Gabriela Díaz, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Paul Wiancko start with the traditional Palestinian folk song, “Ya Taali'een el-Jabal,” led by late singer Rim Banna.
Banna brings vocal force as strong as ancient bedrock and as powerful as a sirocco; Kozasa and Díaz fit into the ensemble snugly even though they joined the quartet in mid-2024, as does cellist Paul Wiancko, who joined in 2023; and founding member and violinist David Harrington continues to have steady hands and a steadier mind to guide them through skirling complexities.
The steadiness and a well-practiced sense of daring also guide “Fólk Fær Andlit,” which the quartet rearranges from Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s cello-and-voice conception into something still and icy, with a low murmur of dark life underneath a layer of drifting snow and permafrost.
And then there are the four movements that make up “Chernobyl. The Harvest,” which Ukrainian Mariana Sadovska wrote. She sings with elegant passion that parallels Banna’s, and, on one of the 2024 sessions before they left Kronos, violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt suggest a vibrant continuity between them and their successors.
As “Chernobyl” passes through its phases, from “The Road” to “Paradise,” it also provides a primer of possibilities for classical music as a contemporary idiom. Forgive Us For maintains Kronos Quartet’s reputation for challengingly listenable music.
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