2024

I could say it seems like only yesterday that the quartet started and we did our first concert with Penderecki. It wasn’t yesterday but almost 50 years ago that I asked my friends and colleagues at the Royal Academy of Music to join me in forming a string quartet to play Penderecki’s 2nd quartet. The memory is still very vivid even though we now have thousands of concerts and numerous first performances under our belt.
I have documented my working relationship with 25 of those composers in a book called Collaborations, recently released by Schott.
We are now about to enter my 50th year of performing and many venues worldwide will celebrate this milestone.
In 2024 we will not be celebrating with many new compositions but also looking back to some of the works already written for us. We will however have new pieces by composers who have never written for us before, Cathy Milliken, Chaya Czernowin, Sarah Nemtsov and Stefan Prins.

There will be two concerts in February, In Rome on 20th and in Basle on 27th. Both will celebrate our anniversary and the Basle concert will include the premiere of James Clarke’s 7th quartet, a short work he wrote in 2023.
The Boulez Saal, in Berlin have ‘captured’ our precise anniversary date, the 7th March which is exactly 50 years to the day after our first concert in the Royal Academy of Music in 1974. In this concert we will give the premiere of Cathy Milliken’s ‘In Speak’.

Cathy says of the work, ‘Creating a concept for a new work for the Arditti Quartet calls upon my experience of having played with them as well as having heard many of their premieres throughout their existence.
I have previously interviewed each member to identify short textual extracts from these conversations which seemingly embody the quartet’s practise in interpreting new works.
I will give these extracts musical transformations such as rhythmic/pitch translations, occasionally becoming vocal interjections or accompaniments to the instrumental material.
I have chosen to work with the poet and bass player Matthew McDonald. Matthew is the world-renowned Australian principal bass player of the Berlin Philharmonic and co-ex-member of Ensemble Modern. He has recently become a writer whose collection of poetry is soon to be released.
For this collaboration, I will combine my own textual extracts that form the basis of the new work with Matthews poem Octopus rehearsal, which he wrote for the quartet’s anniversary, inspired by their rehearsal sessions and performances. I will in this way transform the quartet’s actual personal responses and verbal/musical communication into a new poetic language, which will underscore and influence my composition.’  (Commissioned by Creative Australia)

Also in this concert will be a new piano quintet by Toshio Hosokawa which we will perform with the brilliant young  Japanese pianist Tomoki Kitamura. It will receive a further performance in Tokyo in August.  (Commissioned by the Suntory Hall in Japan and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation)

The new work focus then moves to early May, where on the 3rd the quartet will return to their much visited festival in Witten and perform a large scale theatre work by Hannes Seidl. (Commissioned by the West Deutscher Rundfunk, (WDR) and the City of Witten for Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2024)

Patrick Hahn, director of Witten music days talks about the inspiration for the work and its realisation.

‘In his book “Collaborations” Irvine Arditti describes in a short paragraph a verbally transmitted idea by Karlheinz Stockhausen for a new string quartet which was never realised. Having previously made the Ardittis fly with four helicopters, Stockhausen now intended to immortalise the four musicians in a “museum piece” (almost literally). “Each player sits in a separate glass cabin and cannot hear the others. The glass has a magnifying effect so that each player can be closely observed.” Stockhausen himself would mix the sounds together at a mixing desk and transmit them through loudspeakers. “The work should be done several times a day, forever.” On the occasion of the Arditti Quartet’s 50th birthday, Hannes Seidl is now taking up this idea and transforming it into a piece lasting just under an hour.
The basic idea of four separate musicians in (Plexi) glass showcases is adopted for Hannes Seidl’s composition. Two loudspeakers will be assigned to each of the showcases, on which the instruments will initially be heard alternating in waves or circles, then increasingly mixed. The initial isolation is reflected in individual tempos, volumes and soloistic playing. The possibilities of acoustic amplification are used to take up the idea of “enlargement” and to juxtapose almost inaudible, delicate and fragile sounds with the more powerful, rich ones or even to drown them out. Moreover, as the assignment of loudspeakers to their showcases slowly and steadily rotates, a suction-like, hypnotic play between seeing and hearing, between electronically mediated synchronisation and disparate isolation, is created, which eventually leads more and more to a direct joint interplay of the individuals still exposed in isolation at the beginning. And of course Stockhausen also makes a small guest appearance.
The placement of the showcases can vary depending on the performance location. A decentralised arrangement between which the audience is seated is just as conceivable as a presentation on a (revolving) stage. Additional loudspeakers may be needed to make the circular movements of the amplification visible.’

Shortly following this Witten spectacle on the 11th of May, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg will host a new work by Sarah Nemtsov. Sarah has already completed the work and she says of it, ‘the title Or bahir refers to the 100 year old book by Gerschom Scholem, a scriptural monument from the early days of the Kabbalah.’ From the book,
‘But now the light is not seen, it shines in the heavens’
‘He makes darkness his covering’
‘Clouds and mist are around him’
‘Even darkness is not dark before you, and night shines like day, darkness like light’.
Sarah says, ‘bright light has many meanings here and some contradictory (as life is contradictory). I tried to find sounds that are both dark and inhabit light, I used detuning of several strings for a certain harmonic field and sphere. I looked for glowing harmonies, for foggy textures and strange paths and contrasts. It was an intense work. I wrote the last pages of the quartet while the world broke. (Once more.) Mourning with my friends, family, people, mourning with all innocent, humans, all this loss and pain, mourning for all the children. I look at my child’s eyes. This is the brightest light I know. Our children deserve that we offer them a better place.’    (Commissioned by the Arditti Quartet, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Wien Modern with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation)

Japan sees the next new work focus with a visit to the Suntory Summer festival in Tokyo in late August.
The quartet will be performing three concerts and a fourth with orchestra. (Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra under Brad Lubman). As well as many quartets from the Arditti’s repertoire. Hosokawa’s piano quintet can be heard for a second time as well as a work for the same combination by Hilda Paredes, also with the pianist Tomoki Kitamura. A new quartet has also been commissioned from Naoto Sakata.
On their Japanese trip, the quartet will also visit Takefu where new works by Ken Ueno and Eiko Tsukamoto can be heard.

Then the Autumn is upon us and October sees two premieres. Chaya Czernowin will write a quartet and here is what she says about it:
‘This string quartet will be a kind of an organism, one energetic body hovering in the air,  breathing,  and moving.  This body will rarely be concrete; it will be imagined, hinted, abstracted, and ethereal. It’s kinetic energy will be almost not contained: it will be blowing up or changing shape slowly or very fast, stretching, condensing- all while flying or moving on an imagined terrain. A fluid, never resting phenomenon in above or a part of changing terrain.’

And Diana Soh, ‘I am interested in creating a rhythmically dynamic piece that has quick changing sound colours and having musical information be distributed among the 4 performers such that each melody or line for one performer is incomplete without the others.’

Also in October there will be a concert in Katowice where the premiere of a new work by Andrzej Kwiecinski for my son Jake and the quartet will be premiered. It is always a pleasure to work with Jake, for one he is my son and it is very special working with an important member of your family who has also made music his career and secondly because in the works we have done together Jake takes on and ‘lives’ the role that he is singing both dramatically and musically.
Andrzej writes of his score, ‘My scena (troppo) drammatica is scored for a mezzo-soprano countertenor and string quartet will have textual sources from Metastasio’s libretti but also Michelangelo’s love letters and sonnets.
I’m using scraps, „left overs” from libretti of the parts sung by the secondary characters, each of which should represent three different aspects of imperfect or imaginary love: abandonment, betrayal or idyllic love. However, these are only excerpts of isolated gestures, cut out of the original context, which do not relate to each other directly but are arranged as a sequence of masks hiding unspoken desires.
For many years my artistic endeavours were marked by a kind of dichotomy as my compositional interests and my passion of a countertenor specializing in performance of early music did not tally at all. It was only when I started writing my vocal piece, Canzon de’ baci that I realised that such a situation could not last any longer. I began ‘searching myself’, reflecting on what was of primary importance for me and looking for a platform that could serve as a meeting place for these two worlds.
My idea is to give “Perfido” a Baroque character at its most extreme, albeit not in a self-evident manner. I am not interested in stylisations or playing with conventions. My goal is to create music which, using the idioms inherited from the modernist avant-garde, that constructs a repertoire of gestures which functions are analogous to the musical gestures of the Baroque period. My music is to ‘enact’ the Baroque rather than imitate it.’ (Commissioned by the Arditti Quartet and NOSPR Concert Hall with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation)

The first week in November sees our annual pilgrimage to Vienna and the festival Wien Modern. I have been lucky enough to play at every festival since its initiation in 1988, so 2024 will be my 37th festival. On this occasion we will not only pay tribute to the quartets 50th year but also to the 150th anniversary of Schoenberg’s birth. We will play four concerts in the first week of November each containing one Schoenberg quartet and one new work, each commissioned or co-commissioned by Wien Modern. The most unusual commission of the year is not a quartet but a sextet by Stefan Prins. The two additional members being the inimitable guitarist Yaron Deutsche and the composer himself on electronics.
Stefan say: ‘Composing for the Arditti Quartet, I will be able to create a much more flexible, dynamic and less hierarchical setting. Rather than having the e-guitar as a soloist and then the orchestra or quartet as its ‘accompaniment’ – with the electronics on top of it all, I want to create a work in which the perspective and interaction between these elements/ dimensions constantly changes and shifts.
I am thinking of a composition that is a mosaic, consisting of many parts, rather than a single-movement, wide arched construction. I naturally tend to gravitate towards the Mahlerian breath and would like to leave this comfort zone with this piece by working in shorter parts, which nevertheless would create a network of relations and memories. Like a collection of short stories, in which similar characters reappear, but always from another perspective and in another context. There would be solos, duos, trios, quartets, quintets and sextets, including me on my instrument with which I can live manipulate sound samples, live-recorded or from a sample-bank (which could even contain other pieces the quartet have recorded in the course of the past 50 years).’                              (Commissioned by the Arditti Quartet, Wien Modern and Philharmonie Luxembourg with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation)

No anniversary would be complete without a quartet from my wife Hilda. Her recently completed ‘Diálogos apócrifos’. Hilda says: ‘as I undertook the creation of this new score, I realised it has been ten years since I wrote my last work for the quartet, when the ensemble turned forty. To write a string quartet for the Arditti’s has always been the most challenging projects for me, as I am aware of the capabilities of the ensemble and extraordinary musicianship of each of them. To know the Arditti Quartet has always been inspiring as it gives me a poetic and musical dramaturgy to structure and give direction to the music. As well as Tutti sections, the new quartet also consists of a series of duos which creates a direct relationship between the players.’                  (Commissioned by the Arditti Quartet and Wien Modern with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation)

The quartet’s by Sarah Nemtsov and Chaya Czernowin will also be played in Vienna.
I trust these new pieces along with the wealth of creations over the last five decades will take us into our sixth decade of music making.

The works by Nemtsov, Hosokawa, Czernowin, Soh, Kwiecinski, Prins and Paredes are commissioned by the Arditti Quartet with funds from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Irvine Arditti January 2024