Availability

Score and parts on special sale from the Hire Library

Programme Notes

This quartet contains slow elegies, capriccios, disembodied melodies and chorales broken up into shards and then glued together to make one continuous movement. Many of these fragments are repeated, though never in precisely the same way. For instance a fragment may first appear played as loud as possible and be echoed pianissimo later in the structure. Although the piece starts with a solo (an icy, fragile line for cello) much of the writing is for ‘tutti’ string quartet: an attempt to make the quartet ‘sing’ with one voice. String Quartet No. 2 was commissioned by the Schidlof Quartet with funds from East Midlands Arts.

© John Woolrich

String Quartet No. 2

No Venue (Presteigne, Wales, United Kingdom)

Schidlof Quartet

String Quartet No. 2

No Venue (Lincoln, United Kingdom)

Schidlof Quartet

String Quartet No. 2

Guthlaxton College (Leicester, United Kingdom)

Schidlof Quartet

String Quartet No. 2

No Venue (Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom)

Schidlof Quartet

String Quartet No. 2

No Venue (Lincoln, United Kingdom)

Schidlof Quartet