String Quartet No.4 was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2012. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Wigmore Hall For the Arditti Quartet. Programme note: The basic idea for my Fourth String Quartet was very clear to me: It should be quiet and soft music or to put it in a german term: 'hoch im Himmel gesungen ...' (”High singing in heaven…”). Each of the four movements has a different scordatura/pitch. The first movement begins – like my work ”Schnee” – sky-high with an airy and soft melody by the first violin. The second movement is fast and ”movement andjoy”-like. It consists of two duets and a reverse style counterpoint. While the sections were progressively longer in the first movement they are getting shorter and shorter in the second. ”Dark heavy and earthy” is the third movement and its pizzicato recalls big black raindrops falling to the ground. It is the dark and grainy counterpart to the first movement whereas the fourth movement corresponds to the second. The fourth movement was planned as a dark and heavy counterpart but it turned out to be like ”babbling” music of a child. My Fourth String Quartet has become in its way a serene and cool piece. So the Quartet has been finished luckyly after twenty years – it was already in 1990 that I was commissioned by Wittener Tage für Neue Musik to write the piece for Arditti Quartet. Hans Abrahamsen

String Quartet-Debussy?s new string quartet received a very cool reception at its première in Paris in December 1893 performed by the famous Quatuor Ysaÿe. The critics were upset by its unusual harmonies and orchestral sounds and the musicianswho were later presented with it considered it ?unplayable?. Nevertheless the work was able to establish itself in the years that followed and today belongs to the core chamber music repertoire. The work was published in 1894 as?1er Quatuor?; showing that the composer was at least toying with the idea of writing another such work at this time yet he never did fulfil this promise.

Programme Note This short one-movement quartet is a kind of modernization of the 14th century French motets a cadeau to this weird and fantastic music whose abstract and almost deprecatory introvert expression appears unaccountably modern and incredibly ancient at the same time. MOTET is a sober cool treatise on rhythm and statics depicted in a Gothic crypt-like atmosphere. The almost completely non-vibrato movement is suggestive of boys’ choir monks’ processions and the piercing sound of musical glasses. An ancient world is reborn and becomes the world of today. Poul Ruders 1979

Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. Bach would almost certainly have approved of this string quartet arrangement of his famous concerto for violin and oboe (BWV 1060) by John Cooley as he was well known for making arrangements of his own works, according to instrumental resources at his disposal. Bach himself made an arrangement of this piece for two solo harpsichords and string orchestra. It is quite ?notey? but straightforward and accessible technically to reasonably good players as there are no tricky rhythms or high notes. As well as this Bach concerto arrangement, SJ Music has also published John Cooley?s arrangements of Mozart?s piano duets K497 and K521 for piano trio and piano quartet respectively, Bach?s organ Passacaglia and Fugue for string quartet, and one of Purcell?s trio sonatas for string trio. / Date parution : 2022-03-16/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par GAYE MARVIN / LONGFIELD ROBERT (Arr.). Though initially written over 50 years ago, Marvin Gaye's plea for peace and understanding is a message that still resonates strongly and needs to be heard. This arrangement for string quartet by Robert Longfield maintains the original's easy cool and R