Version for String Quartet.Score available: KP00510The composer writes: 'In February 1987 I saw in the Tate Gallery in London a painting by the Victorian English painter John William Waterhouse. The painting kept haunting my memory and as I at the same time planned to write a piece for solo viola my ideas for the music and the memory of the painting fused more and more. I decided then to let my piece borrow the title of Waterhouse’s paint-ing: 'The Lady of Shalott'. The picture of a mad-like pale and perhaps singing woman alone in a boat without sculls which calmly slips out from the rush growth of the river is an illustration for the ending of Alfred Tennyson’s poemby the same title which again plaits into the old English legends about King Arthur. My piece tries to meander - like the river at Camelot - among these sources. As suggested above the piece was originally written for viola solo. The version for string quartet is from 1993.'

Music styles four centuries apart collide in this creative baroque meets techno treatment of Bad Romance one of Lady Gaga\'s biggest hits. Inspired by the YouTube mega-hit this fugue-style movement is certain to be the audience pleaser of the year.

Ave Maria was composed in about 1825 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828) when he was twenty-eight years old and filled with devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was written for voice and piano and first Published in 1826 as Op 52 no 6. The words most commonly used with Schubert's music are not the words that the composer originally set to music. Franz Schubert actually wrote the music for an excerpt from the poem 'The Lady of the Lake' by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) which was translated into German by Adam Storck. Schubert called his piece Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen's third song). In this particular excerpt from the poem the heroine Ellen Douglas is in hiding and prays to theVirgin Mary. This version for string quartet makes a welcome addition its repertoire.

These four folksongs for String Quartet are ideal for school students at intermediate level: short easy and fun to play. Summers was born in 1973 and started composing aged eight going on to study at Cambridge University and the Royal Northern College of Music.The four songs are: Lady Maisry; Sheep shearing song; Did you see the dark-haired boy; Sej dinom-dánom.