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Belcea Quartet Debuts Krzysztof Penderecki's String Quartet No. 4 at Wigmore Hall

Dec. 08, 2016

Belcea Quartet Debuts Krzysztof Penderecki's <em>String Quartet No. 4</em> at Wigmore Hall

Krzysztof Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 4 receives its world premiere on December 11 at London’s Wigmore Hall, performed by the Belcea Quartet. The program also features a performance of Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 2 alongside two quartets by Franz Schubert. Penderecki’s new quartet was commissioned by Wigmore Hall, London along with the Flagey concert hall in Brussels, the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musica in Madrid, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Polska Music programme with support from the Belcea Charitable Trust.

The composition of Krzysztof Penderecki’s four string quartets is marked by an idiosyncratic interruption: the first two experimental, improvisatory quartets were composed in swift succession in the 1960s, while the third and fourth quartets followed substantially later, but were also written in relatively quick succession in the years 2008 and 2016. The quartet cycle as a whole is exemplary of the composer’s two extensive creative phases, thus displaying a stylistic change that is in a class of its own in the history of music. The very short unnumbered quartet Der unterbrochene Gedanke [The Broken Thought], written in 1988 in the middle of the ‘quartet break’, appears as an apt commentary.

For more information on Krzysztof Penderecki, please visit schott-music.com.

Krzysztof Penderecki
String Quartet No. 4 (2016)

String Quartet No. 2 (1968)
8’

Der unterbrochene Gedanke (1988)
for string quartet
3’

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