Par VASKS PETERIS. The Latvian composer Peteris Vasks, who is known for his atmospheric pieces for string orchestra, “Cantabile”, “Musica dolorosa” and “Voices”, is concentrating increasingly on chamber music: his latest works are the “Partita” for cello and piano, the “Fifth String Quartet” and a piano quartet. Vasks has brought elements of ancient and folk traditions in Latvian music into his compositions. While most of his works have programmatic titles relating to natural processes, Vasks is not concerned with a poetic homage to Nature, nor with depiction of landscape as an aesthetic ideal. The main themes which Vasks explores in his most recent musical work are the reciprocal relationship between man and Nature, the beauty of life and the impending ecological and moral destruction of these values./ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par LEWIS GEORGE. Although his Signifying Riffs (1998) for percussion and strings is halfway there, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living (2016) is the first proper string quartet by composer George Lewis. Borrowing its title from the writings of John Stuart Mill, Experiments in Living leads the performers through a series of idiosyncratic episodes featuring extremes of gesture and extended technique over the course of a single, 16-minute movement. Commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living was composed for Spektral Quartet, who gave the premiere performance in October 2016 at Chicago\'s Harris Theater. This set of score and parts has been made available for sale by Edition Peters as part of the Peters Contemporary Chamber Series and includes full performance notes. Chopsticks and superball mallets are required to achieve some of the score\'s percussive playing techniques. / Date parution : 2022-09-07/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Peter Gregson's Warmth for String Quartet. An Alternate version arranged for String Quartet and Juno Synthesiser can be found here .  

The Full Score for Peter Maxwell Davies’ fourth in a series of ten string quartets commissioned by the Naxos Recording company first performed by the Maggini Quartet on 20th August 2004 at the Chapel of the Royal Palace Oslo Norway as part of the Olso Chamber Music Festival. Composer Note: The fourth Naxos quartet was written in January and February of 2004 with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than itspredecessor an unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq.I returned to the well-known Brueghel picture of children's games (1560 now in Vienna) which had been the inspiration for my sixthStrathclyde Concerto for flute and orchestra. These illustrations liberated my musical imagination but I feel it would limit the listener's perception to be too specific about which game relates to exactly which section of thework. Suffice it to say that there is vigorous play - leap-frog bind the devil with a cord truss wrestling - alongside quieter pastimes - masks guess whom I shall choose courting odds and evens. The single movementjuxtaposes these activities as abruptly and intimately as they occur in Brueghel. Rather as the eye is taken into different perspectives and proportions of scale within the picture taking liberties which would never be presentin for instance Brunelleschi architectural drawings so here with a constant sequence of transformation processes I have distorted the neat precise implications of modal progression expressed in the unison opening phrase(from F to B through A sharp/B flat) so that the ear is led en route into the sound equivalents of strange passageways and closed rooms: sicut exposition ludus. As work on the quartet progressed I became aware that Iwas reading into and behind the games adult motives and implications concerning aggression and war with their consequences. It was impossible to escape into innocent childhood fantasy. The nature of the F to B

This work comprises arrangements of two classic songs by Gershwin: 'Somebody Loves Me' and 'The Man I Love' arranged by Peter Sculthorpe for String Quartet. Full Score.