SKU: 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. Daktylus3. 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.
SKU: ST.Y248
ISBN 9790220222351.
Commissioned by Bromsgrove Concerts with financial assistance from Arts Council England 1st perf: Smith Quartet, Artrix, Bromsgrove, 27 February 2009 Favoured by English composers from Purcell to Vaughan Williams and Britten, the ground-bass form receives a contemporary makeover in Morgan Hayes's Dances on a Ground. Artfully four-square, a cello ostinato stays stubbornly true to its original thoughts. Meanwhile, above it a capricious ensemble of two violins and viola swaggers its way through flights of melody and jumpy pizzicati to an ecstatic conclusion. Commissioned by Bromsgrove Concerts with funding provided by Arts Council England, Dances on a Ground was first performed by the innovative Smith Quartet at the Artrix, Bromsgrove, on 27 February 2009.
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: HL.14023641
ISBN 9780711964082. 9.0x12.0x0.219 inches.
String Quartet No.4 was written for the Camilli Quartet who gave the first performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, April 1995. It is dedicated to the memory of Nyman's composition teacher, Alan Bush. This quartet is a narrative made up of a chain of twelve complete but often cross-related movements, each quite simple in design. For instance, the Scottish melody first heard in the second half of I is hinted at in the 2nd violin/viola in the second fast section of II and is directly quoted again during III and XII. The theme of the fast section of IV is taken up again in VIII; IX reverts to the mood of the opening of I, while the rising scale/syncopated themes of II, IX and the bass of X and XII are related. X also reintroduces the slow harmonics theme from VII. XII is (apparently) cast in the form of a baroque French rondeau. The main theme of VI was plucked out of the Quartet and used in my score for Christopher Hampton's film Carrington. Duration 40 minutes. A set of parts is available for sale.
SKU: HL.14041524
ISBN 9788759871812. Danish-English.
Programme Note During the composition of my tenth string quartet a flower-name, host-tidlos, came to my mind - and it would not me leave again. [hosttidlos is actually autumn crocus in English, but the composer prefers harvest-timeless, to maintain some of the associations of the Danish flower-name, red.] The paradoxical union of a seasonal time (harvest) and no-time-at-all was a good fit to the sections of the work that I had composed at that time, and I decided to tentatively stick to that title for the work-in-progress, and now, having finished the piece, I can say that is is still a fitting title - and it stands. Enough about the title, I will go on to describe themusic, a somewhat more precarious project. My tenth string quartet is probably the most basic string quartet that I have composed: melodically - and in sound - it employs the naturally based overtones and undertones (perceived at major and minor, respectively), and rhythmically it is based on growth, on the principles of the Golden Section, and the structure itself contrasts abundance and exuberance with sections of immobility and contemplation. However, Melos, melody, is definitely the dominating aspect of my STRING QUARTET NO. 10: behind even the most rhythmically complex or pure sonoric sections lies a firm - if hidden - basis of melodic or polyphonic ideas. The work was composed in 2004-2005 for the Kroger Quartet.
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