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Huw Watkins's String Quartet No. 2 Premiered by the Calidore String Quartet at Wigmore Hall

Jun. 23, 2022

The Calidore String Quartet performed the world premiere of Huw Watkins's String Quartet No. 2 at Wigmore Hall on May 16. The piece was commissioned by Wigmore Hall and Chamber Music Columbus with support from Charles and Betsy Warner. In a program note, Tom Coult describes the landscape of this new work:

"String Quartet No. 2 opens with the first violin dancing above single pitches. The movement goes by at fantastic speed, but it is not ‘fast’ music as we conventionally think of it, especially once slower melodies join underneath: it never feels hurried, instead darting and swooping like a bird in flight. There is much that recalls Britten, particularly the way individual lines, larger phrases and whole sections build then subside like waves. 

The dancing, darting triplets that zipped by in the first movement initially seem to have been slowed to a gentle sway in the second, but things accelerate and intensify as the movement goes on, as threes become fours, fives, sixes. Even when the opening music returns, it now brings forceful, angular contributions from the first violin, and an ambiguous conclusion on an uneasily blurred G major chord. 

The final movement again moves at considerable pace, our tour guide an infectious skipping motif heard at the opening. There are fewer troubles in this finale, which, whilst certainly not without drama, is always swept along by the euphoric joy of four musicians willing each other on, racing each other over varied terrain towards the finish line."

Listen to Huw Watkins's Coruscation and Reflection (1998):
(Huw Watkins's Coruscation and Reflection performed by violinist Daniel Bell
with the composer at the piano)


To learn more about Huw Watkins, visit: schott-music.com.

Huw Watkins
String Quartet No. 2



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