Music from ongoing string quartet cycle A Book of Inventions filmed by Tim Hopkins

‘Like all the most interesting composers, John Woolrich’s work is a kaleidoscopic mixture: of spiky wit, lightness, dark menace, on canvasses that are hugely ambitious or delicately miniature. Like one of his anecdotes, I would never predict how a Woolrich piece will unfold; he’s the master of surprise and variation. I’ve premiered some of the pieces from his Pianobooks, a wonderful collection of dramatic vignettes all with beguiling titles (Five Gestures of Parting, The Gastrolaters’ Final Sa