Score available (NOV120161).This work was written during the spring of 1964 and was commissioned by the artist Maurice de Sausmarez in memory of his mother Jessie Rose de Sausmarez. The first performance took place in London during the same year. The work is a kind of epitaph or memorial and each movement tries to express a different aspect of grief culminating in a more extended elegiac fugue. All seven variations are based on a single series of notes and the series is used both thematically and as a structural basis. There is therefore no 'theme' in the traditional sense and in this respect the work follows the practice of many modern essays in variation form.

Par FREEMAN ALEX. Alex Freeman found initial inspiration for his string quartet (2015) in a series of photographs a geologist friend showed him of en échelon veins in rock formations. The open strings punctuated with pizzicato unisons that begin the single-movement work call to mind something crystalline and shimmering, which is immediately infused with tumbling lyrical lines in something of a rapid caccia technique throughout. The middle of the work becomes more suspended in slower material loosely based on a technique of prolation canon, comprises layers of free, expressive, lyrical, and even elegiac music moving at different speeds. As the work concludes, the materials converge in a rhythmically pulsating stasis and an almost chorale-like statement. Duration: c. 13' This product includes the score and the parts (A4 sized). American-Finnish composer Alex Freeman (b.1972) has established himself among the foremost composers of choral music in Finland. A dedicated citizen of his musical community, a teacher, and a choral singer himself, he composes music that reflects an appreciation for a wide range of aesthetics and a passion for communicating with listeners and performers. In his choral works, in particular, we find music that aims to be sonorous, melodic, and resonant, but is always crafted to carefully avoid the cliches that can burden conventional tonality. His instrumental works run the gamut: a cantata with orchestra based on poetry of Whitman; a significant body of solo piano works that reveal deep roots in everything from austere absolute music to soaring elegaic rhetoric (see Albany Records, Inner Voice); his chamber work Blueshift (Navona Records), which is a kind of paean to Reich and Adams in miniature; open-ended modular works, like various iterations of his Slow All Clocks for electronic media, solo clarinet, and mixed choirs of kanteles; and, recently, some new directions in microtonal music. / Date parution : 2022-05-31/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

The second String Quartet by Joan Tower is a short but complex work addressing thoughts of death and loss written in memory of an old friend. The piece was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Tokyo String Quartet who firstperformed the piece in February 2002 at the 92nd Street Y New York City.Further inspired by the events in New York on September 11th 2001 the writing contains high sustained celestial material which slowly descends. Thiswriting is paired with more forceful driving and repetitive musical ideas that attempt to express the anger and pain that results from the loss of people in one's life.

Deux mondes totalement différents se réunissent à ce quartet : d'une part, une ambiance sonore vivant principalement par le biais de légers changements d'un son principalement stagnant et parfois transformer en une harmonique de la harpe éolienne ressemblant sonore et d'autre part, un conte de quatre personnes représentées par quatre thèmes qui subissent des changements et les développements dans une histoire. L'histoire du quatre peuple raconte aussi des sentiments, de solitude, nostalgie, de bonheur et la peur, de changements et de paix intérieure trouvé. En multipliant les interventions de ce conte émotionnel dans l'environnement sonore plutôt impersonnelle, par la suspension et l'écoute, l'expérience de personnes une plus grande distance de leurs émotions et la participation, l'étape de retour et devenir des observateurs, comme on - juste dans la tradition d'une méditation bouddhiste d'attention. / Quatuor A Cordes

String Quartets Book III op. 17-The autograph score of the Quartets op. 17 was in the possession of the imperial police chief Johann Nepomuk Neuwirth whose widow gave it to the Wiener Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1875. It is said that Haydn ?used to playthe viola in quartet rehearsals? at the Neuwirth?s house. Whether the Quartets op. 17 were composed for these gatherings can no longer be ascertained. However even today they still have a fixed place amongst the music of allchamber music friends and in particular nos. 4 5 and 6 which are very different to the divertimento style of the early quartets are played again and again.