Dedicated to Thurston Dart Michael Nyman?s professor at King?s College London much of String Quartet No. 1 borrows and is inspired by the works of seventeenth century composer John Bull whosecomplete keyboard works Dart gave Nyman as a birthday present. The other main source of inspiration was Schöneberg?s Second String Quartet from the early 20th century.In his introduction to the piece Nymandescribes his two background ideas when composing the work: first to make an almost ?orchestral? chamber music and second to exorcise the impressive and oppressive history of the String quartet by making his work a compendium ofquotations from the quartet repertoire. Commissioned by the Arditti Quartet and first performed by them in 1985 String Quartet No. 1 has a duration of 25:44 minutes.Michael Nyman is an Englishcomposer of minimalist music pianist librettist and musicologist known for numerous film and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to ?The Piano?. He has additionally written a number of operas six concerti four stringquartets and many other chamber works.

This single-movement for String quartet employs some of the more familiar elements of Herrmannâ??s compositional style: short musical phrases repeated and then repeated again in other positions sharp use of dynamics among them. It is a fascinating sidelight into the work of one of the 20th centuryâ??s most brilliant composers.Bernard Herrmann was among the greatest of all composers of music for cinema and there are many who avow that he was the greatest of all. A very short list of the films for which this award-winning composer created soundtracks includes Citizen Kane The Man Who Knew Too Much Vertigo Jason and Argonauts Fahrenheit 451 Obsession and Taxi Driver. He had along and fertile association with Alfred Hitchcock during the most productive period of Hitchcockâ??s career and with Orson Welles from the time of the Mercury Theatre on the Air. In addition to his conducting and composing work for the entertainment world Herrmann wrote concert pieces including a symphony opera and cantata.

Programme Note This short one-movement quartet is a kind of modernization of the 14th century French motets a cadeau to this weird and fantastic music whose abstract and almost deprecatory introvert expression appears unaccountably modern and incredibly ancient at the same time. MOTET is a sober cool treatise on rhythm and statics depicted in a Gothic crypt-like atmosphere. The almost completely non-vibrato movement is suggestive of boys’ choir monks’ processions and the piercing sound of musical glasses. An ancient world is reborn and becomes the world of today. Poul Ruders 1979

Quartet in C Minor is in four movements with a total duration of about 25 minutes. The opening Allegro is Dvorák-ish in its lyricism though there is a darker more brooding atmosphere towards the close. It is tempting to detect a hint of folk-song in the theme of the Andantino played by the Viola but that may be stretching hindsight too far. The movement has a wistful melancholy that carries over into the following Intermezzo a song-like episode containing some of the most virtuosic writing in the work. The last movement is a theme and six variations with a fugal ending. The theme is ballad-like with a suggestion of 18th-century elegance. Modality creeps into thesecond Adagio variation and there is rhythmic exhilaration in the succeeding Presto. What can be admired in this attractive quartet is its conciseness. This String Quartet was his first major composition of any kind.

Lubo? Fi?er (1935?1999) was one of the most distinctive figures of Czech music in the 20th century and composed the Variations on an Unknown Theme in 1976. The ?unknown theme? was a prankish eight-bar theme from Fi?er?s student days. In the elation following the home-team win over Canada on 15 March 1959, he made a bet with his colleague Kalach to compose a concert piece for violin and orchestra with the working title ?Canada-Rondo?. The whimsical contest was abandoned, but Fi?er did not forget the theme and he later created variations on it for his new composition for the Talich Quartet. The Variations on an Unknown Theme have now been published for the first time ever. This edition is based on the autograph of the score which is housed in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague.

Par BARTOK BELA. Bartok's 'String Quartet No. 5' was commissioned by the formidable Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, leading patron of chamber music in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. Bartok is alleged to have composed the work in a one-month span of isolation in 1934, and it received its premiere in Washington, D.C. by the Kolisch Quartet in 1935. The String Quartet No. 5 was published shortly thereafter by Universal Edition, who now incorporates the score into their UE Study Score Series in a handsome new publication./ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Kevin Volans' String Quartet No. 9: Shiva Dances was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and first performed by the Smith Quartet at the 2004 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.Kevin Volans (the composer) notes on the piece:In the past I have been interested in trying to go beyond historicism (1970s) beyond style(1980s) and beyond form (1990s) in my work. Looking back over the music of the twentiethcentury I was struck by the fact the nearlyall of it is extremely 'busy' almost cluttered. Italmost seemed that composers felt compelled to look industrious. In the new millennium Ithought it would be interesting to try and eliminate content. I also aspired to movingfrommusic (sound as art) to art (art as sound). This of course has already been done by a numberof composers (many from New York Phil Niblock and La Monte Young to name but two) butit was something I had never tried.AlthoughI found it annoying that the label 'minimalist' was given to my African-based work and fearing this would make the label stick I set out to write a piece which reflected my loveof minimal painting and architecture. The Japanesehave a term 'wabi' meaning 'voluntarypoverty' or 'emptiness' to describe their restrained minimal aesthetic an aesthetic which however pays greatest attention to the quality of material and fine detail. I like to think thatthelack of excessive pitch material in this piece reflects a kind of voluntary poverty.When Shiva is portrayed dancing (as Nataraj) He is depicted in a circle of flames crushing asmall figure the ego underfoot.You get theimpression He dances on the spot not movingaround at all. I like that.The piece is dedicated to Pablo Pascual Cilleruelo.