The Solem Quartet presents the first of a six-part series, Beethoven Bartók Now, featuring the world premiere of new work by Aaron Parker: tuóretu.
Lonely melodies supported by eerie dissonances punctuated with sounds of nature characterise Bartók’s ‘night music’ style. Beethoven’s op. 130, the second of the late Quartets, contains an extraordinary palette of darkness and light in six remarkable movements. The young British composer Aaron Parker has written a spellbinding new work, tuóretu, featuring references to Bartok’s ‘night music’, with a depth of harmonic expression found so richly in Beethoven’s Quartet no. 13. In the Solem Quartet’s forthcoming concert, Parker’s work unites the different worlds of these giants and translates them into something new.
The Solem Quartet’s imaginatively constructed concert takes the form of an hour-long tapestry of music, interspersing Parker’s own reflections with movements from Beethoven’s Quartet n. 13, op. 130 and Bartók’s Quartet no. 5. The concert is the first of the Solem Quartet’s ambitious six-part series, Beethoven Bartók Now, bringing together the late quartets of Beethoven and the quartets of Béla Bartók, uniquely reimagined with newly-commissioned music from composers of today.
Aaron Parker (b. 1991) writes loosely-defined instrumental and electronic music informed by a love of landscape, film visual art and sound. He describes tuóretu, his new work, thus: “The piece is in a series of interlinked movements, and each explores different parameters of the string quartet. I decided to immerse myself in the Beethoven and Bartok quartets, and, once digested, to write my piece with these two quartets ringing in my ears. So, it is an intuitive response, rather than a conceptual one; the music being a response to both the ‘night’ brief and the two quartets.
“Each player in the string quartet is amplified, and at various points the amplified signal is sent through loop pedals (the kind you’d use with an electric guitar) so that multiple layers can be accumulated over time, providing an extra dimension not normally part of a string quartet’s remit.”
St. Giles Church, Camberwell Church Street, SE5 8RB on Thursday, July 1st. Time: 8:30pm – 9:30pm. Admission: £5 – £20 plus booking fee.
Booking: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beethoven-bartok-now-night-music-tickets-152079015429
Photo: Bertie Wilson