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String Quartet No.1 (2001)

Part of the booklet-text: I worked on my First String Quartet during a stay in Corbella, in the Onsernone Valley region of Ticino in Switzerland. The villages in that primeval valley fairly burst with life in the summer, but they make a peculiarly abandoned impression once the season is over. Then the shutters are all closed, and one hardly encounters a soul in the narrow lanes. It was in that quiet, mysterious atmosphere and in an occasionally somewhat melancholy mood that I wrote the first two movements in the autumn of 1998. To some extent, the third movement was an interpolation. The little piece came to me a year later in Sweden, while I was taking a break from working on my Cello Concerto by extemporizing at the piano. I thought it would briefly brighten up the work and fit in well after the two rather dark movements and before the rhythmically dramatic fourth movement, so I arranged it for string quartet. The fourth movement uses the rhythm of the bulerías, a flamenco dance form in 12/8 time. I got to know flamenco music and dance when I was young and have been fascinated by their expressiveness ever since. Later I even took lessons in flamenco dancing myself for some years, but finally had to admit that the undertaking was destined to fail, for I do not have the necessary fire in my blood. The fascination the music holds for me has never abated, however, and I long toyed with the idea of one day composing something a little along the lines of flamenco music. That was how the fourth movement came into being in the Onsernone Valley in the late summer of 1999. I attempted to maintain the bulerías rhythm throughout the piece as far as possible, secretly hoping that the movement might even turn out to be danceable. I created another version of the movement in 2003 by arranging it for a large symphony orchestra. Just at the time when I wanted to begin work on the string quartet in 1998, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet asked me to write a piece for them. The work was thus conceived in two versions from the very beginning. The version for saxophones was premiered by the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet at the Tonhalle in Zurich in the summer of 2000, but the string version was not heard for another four years. The Sarastro Quartet premiered it during the Swiss Chamber Music Festival at Lenzburg Castle in the spring of 2004.

Recordings

Petersen Quartett

Capriccio - 67 106 (P 2004)

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