SKU: HL.14021094

ISBN 9780853609216.

This Quartet was commissioned by the Delme String Quartet, to whom it is dedicated. First performed by the Quartet, London 1982. Duration 20 minutes. A Score is also available for sale.

SKU: PR.14440385S

UPC: 680160029907.

A shorter and less stringent work than my two previous quartets (1992 and 1994), the Fourth Quartet is comprised, almost obsessively, of the interplay between two thematic kernels: (1) a 5-note motto, announced at the outset, derived from pitches in my own name; and (2) a brief legato line of expressive sevenths (minor/major), which is itself born out of the first cell. Both of these fragments constantly pervade the entire work, albeit in ever-changing raiment. The piece is extremely classical in design: four movements played without interruption - slow/fast/slow/fast - with the first and third sections alternating declamatory and calmer gestures, and the second and fourth being, in effect, almost variants of each other. Quartet No. 4 is approximately 20 minutes in duration and each movement, as noted, was written in memory of dear friends who passed away during late 1995 and early 1996. The work was completed in April of 1996 in Ormond, Florida and Fairport, New York. --Sydney Hodkinson.
A shorter and less stringent work than my two previous quartets (1992 and 1994), the Fourth Quartet is comprised, almost obsessively, of the interplay between two thematic kernels: (1) a 5-note motto, announced at the outset, derived from pitches in my own name; and (2) a brief legato line of expressive sevenths (minor/major), which is itself born out of the first cell.  Both of these fragments constantly pervade the entire work, albeit in ever-changing raiment.The piece is extremely classical in design: four movements played without interruption – slow/fast/slow/fast – with the first and third sections alternating declamatory and calmer gestures, and the second and fourth being, in effect, almost variants of each other.Quartet No. 4 is approximately 20 minutes in duration and each movement, as noted, was written in memory of dear friends who passed away during late 1995 and early 1996.  The work was completed in April of 1996 in Ormond, Florida and Fairport, New York.—Sydney Hodkinson.

SKU: HL.49045639

ISBN 9781540004796. UPC: 888680710774. 9.5x12.0x0.37 inches.

Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music.My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach's D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern.My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl.

SKU: FG.55011-878-2

Lasting 27 minutes, Kalevi Aho’s String quartet no. 4 (2021) is in four movements. The first, Nocturne, begins with a hazily muted melody dominated by the interval of a minor third on the second violin. Though the first movement begins in nocturnal mood, there is also some more forceful music around the middle. The second movement, Allegro capriccioso, is quick with quirky rhythms. At times tempestuous, it faces the players with the biggest technical and virtuoso challenges. The following Largo is slow. A couple of times in the first half it is dominated by soft, mysterious harmonies. The tempo marking of the virtuosic closing movement is Presto, leggiore. The movement begins with quick, flickering, will-o’-the-wisp-like music. It later builds up to an extremely violent climax dominated by tremolo figures on the second violin and thick chords on the other instruments. The flickering music of the beginning returns at the end, before dissolving into silence.

This product includes the full score (A4) and the parts (B4).

SKU: FG.55011-498-2

ISBN 9790550114982.

Kimmo Hakola's String Quartet No. 4 op. 95 (2016) was commissioned by the Kimito Island Music Finland and it's dedicated to the Meta4 Quartet. In composer's words, it is the floundering, playful, if necessary defiantly dramatic, surprising, capricious and unrestrained tour de force of a youthful entity.Kimmo Hakola has gone through a number of styles and influences in his career as a composer, his idiom expanding at times to embrace Romanticism, Orientalism and klezmer. He has attained international recognition with an output that spans various genres from intimate solo works to full-length operas such as La Fenice (2011) commissioned by the Savonlinna Opera Festival. Many of his works are expansive and epic: his Piano Concerto (1996), for instance, clocks in at 55 minutes. Hakola says that he sees music as drama. His dramas explore almost Shakespearean extremes, from moments of raging 'sound and fury' and violent battles to quiet moments of meditation and heart-rending monologues.