Silesian String Quartet / Concert cycle: The Strange and the Curious (2) - NOSPR

This is the 12th seasons  when the Silesian String Quartet is curating its original concert cycle at the NOSPR. The current edition, entitled The Strange and the Curious, will take us on a diverse and surprising musical journey. It is devoted to works that are rarely performed, strikingly unconventional, and distinctive in character. Each of them opens a new chapter, often turbulent in its history and always unusual in form and timbre. Over the course of five concerts, the audience are invited to discover fresh perspectives on the string quartet, including settings that extend the ensemble with additional instruments.

Mieczysław Weinberg’s String Quartet No 6 has a story marked by misfortune. At first it seemed to promise success: in 1947 it was warmly received and even praised by the Soviet Composers’ Union. Yet soon it was blacklisted as a work deemed to lead Soviet music astray from the path dictated by the Party doctrine. So severe was the blow for Weinberg that he did not write another quartet for eleven years. Stalin may have annulled the blacklist a few years later, but the damage was done and the piece slipped into obscurity. All evidence suggests, it resurfaced only in 2007 (!) when Quatuor Danel performed it at a concert in Manchester.

The haunting intensity of Weinberg’s six-part composition finds a striking companion in the work of Zbigniew Bargielski. Written in 2012 for the Silesian String Quartet and Piotr Sałajczyk, his Schizofonia may possibly be interpreted, according to the composer himself, ‘as a rather liberal travesty of the term schizophrenia. It refers to a musical representation (or equivalent) of the mental state of a split, divided person, who lives, so to speak, a double life’. Musically, this manifests itself as a clash between two worlds: a somewhat archaic chorale and piano figurations. As the piece progresses, the two elements weave together, their relationship growing ever more complex.

Set against this background, Charles Ives’s Halloween strikes a deliberately contrasting note. This short piece from the early 20th century holds many surprises – not least because it remains uncertain how many times its various sections are to be performed! Strings move in scale-like processions that gather into a curious cluster, while the piano complements it with a stark atonality. The composer here draws upon the American tradition of Halloween, replete with elaborate costumes and bonfires.

[Julia Broniowska]