String Quartet

SKU: FG.55011-553-8

Allerheiligentag III. Composed by Jyrki Linjama. Classical. Score and Parts. Fennica Gehrman #55011-553-8. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-553-8).

Jyrki Linjama's second string quartet (2018) is subtitled Allerheiligentag III. The material for the Allerheiligentag cycle is a Finnish folk chorale for All Saints' Day (no. 146 in the Finnish Hymn Book). The first work in the cycle is a string trio (2007), the second a piece for orchestra (2009), and the fourth and fifth are solo works for viola da gamba and violin.The composer tells: The choice of topic and material for the string trio was originally prompted by the venue at which it was to be premiered: the old church on the island of Seili (Sjalo). The bleak history of the island's leper and mental hospital evoked images of suffering and death. I got so attached to the harsh and beautiful melody that it began to generate a whole cycle. The string quartet is in three movements (slow-quick-slow) tensed in different ways by contrasts. The first movement has both swinging softness and cutting sharpness, the Scherzo the wildness of a dance of death and lyricism, and the finale the irrevocability of a funeral march and tender melodiousness.

2 violins, viola, violoncello

SKU: FG.55011-875-1

Composed by Lotta Wennäkoski. Classical, contemporary. Score & parts. Fennica Gehrman #55011-875-1. Published by Fennica Gehrman (FG.55011-875-1).

Lotta Wennäkoski's Pige (2021-2022) for string quartet was commissioned to be paired with the Death and the Maiden quartet by Franz Schubert (pige is Danish for girl). The composer tells:

The first movement Vorüber, ach, vorüber! is based on the first half of Schubert’s lied lying behind his The Death and the Maiden quartet. The maiden’s song in the beginning of the lied has not found its way to his string quartet, so I wanted to use this material in mine. The second move-ment Daktylus borrows its idea from the haunting pulse of Schubert’s chant of Death. Something fierce and something soundless can be heard here - along with other variants on the dactyl rhythm. For example, I’ve written a lyrically flowing melody based on the same rhythmic pattern (long-short-short).

Schubert’s quartet is wonderful music and of course a cornerstone of the repertoire, and the death and the maiden is a strong, tempting and gloomy motif in art history. On the other hand, I just couldn’t help seeing the motif also as a - somewhat passé - image of an old male desiring the ulti-mately young female body. The third movement thus turns its gaze to the girl herself. Pigen og scrapbogen, The Girl and the Scrapbook, is joyful textural music - compiled of fragments and freely handled quotations that might spring to mind when thinking of a vital girl’s life.


This product includes the full score and the set of parts.

Movements:
1. Vorüber, ach, vorüber!
2. Daktylus
3. Pigen og scrapbogen (das Mädchen und das Scrapbuch)

The first movement can also be performed separately as a prologue to The Death and the Maiden string quartet by Franz Schubert.