String Quartet

SKU: HL.14008374

Composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Music Sales America. Classical. Score. Composed 2006. 24 pages. Chester Music #CH68629. Published by Chester Music (HL.14008374).

ISBN 9781846096150. UPC: 884088435202. 8.25x11.75x0.105 inches.

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 its predecessor, 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 sixth Strathclyde 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 the work. 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 movement juxtaposes 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 present in, 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 I was 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 progression underlying the whole construction derives from a passage in the development of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, and the opening of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. However, unlike in these models, here a real - if temporary - sense of resolution occurs at the close of the quartet: as when the curtain falls on the reconciled Count and Countess in 'Figaro' one wonders how long the F/B truce will hold, and games break out again. The quartet is dedicated to Giuseppe Rebecchini, Roman architect, and friend since the nineteen-fifties.

By Dvorak Antonin. Czech title: Smy covy kvartet 4 e moll (B 19). Published by Praha (Czech import).

String Quartet

SKU: HL.14035177

Composed by Kevin Volans. Music Sales America. Classical. Book [Softcover]. Composed 1999. 32 pages. Chester Music #CH61341. Published by Chester Music (HL.14035177).

ISBN 9780711979406. 8.25x11.75x0.142 inches.

Irish composer Kevin Volans' work has gained international acclaim over the years. Drawing on a combination of European and African compositional techniques, his music displays a unique charm. Volans' distinctive sound is heavily in demand, and since the mid-1980s his work has been performed regularly at such venues as the Pompidou Centre, the Royal Albert Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York. This work for string quartet was commissioned by the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and was first performed on the 16th December 1990 at the Almeida Theatre, London, by the Smith Quartet. Score. Parts available: CH61342.

Irish composer Kevin Volans' work has gained international acclaim over the years. Drawing on a combination of European and African compositional techniques, his music displays a unique charm. Volans' distinctive sound is heavily in demand, and since the mid-1980s his work has been performed regularly at such venues as the Pompidou Centre, the Royal Albert Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York. This work for string quartet was commissioned by the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and was first performed on the 16th December 1990 at the Almeida Theatre, London, by the Smith Quartet. Set of parts. Score available: CH61341

String Quartet No.4 was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2012. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Wigmore Hall For the ArdittiQuartet. Programme note: The basic idea for my Fourth String Quartet was very clear to me: It should be quiet and soft music or to put it in a german term: hoch im Himmel gesungen ... (High singing in heaven). Each of the four movements has a different scordatura/pitch. The first movement begins - like my work 'Schnee' - sky-high with an airy and soft melody by the first violin. The second movement is fast and movement and joy-like. It consists of two duets and a reverse style counterpoint. While the sections were progressively longer in the first movement they are getting shorter and shorter in the second. Dark, heavy and earthy is the third movement and its pizzicato recalls big black raindrops falling to the ground. It is the dark and grainy counterpart to the first movement whereas the fourth movement corresponds to the second. The fourth movement was planned as a dark and heavy counterpart but it turned out to be like babbling music of a child. My Fourth String Quartet has become in its way a serene and cool piece. So the Quartet has been finished luckiyly after twenty years - it was already in 1990 that I was commissioned by Wittener Tage fur Neue Musik to write the piece for Arditti Quartet. Hans Abrahamsen

Chamber Music String Quartet

SKU: PR.14440385S

Composed by Sydney F. Hodkinson. Large Score. With Standard notation. Duration 20 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #144-40385S. Published by Theodore Presser Company (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.

By Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). For string quartet (2 violins, viola, violoncello). Chamber music for strings. Czech title: Smy covy kvartet 4. Classical. Study score. Publication language: Czech/German/English/Fren ch