Output details

Music for String Quartet and Electronics. CD recording by Smith Quartet. Nic Pendlebury (viola).

This practice-led research output represents the culmination of an international and intercultural musical collaboration and creative exchange between the Smith Quartet and Miso Music Portugal. Named 'Circuits' the project received support from the British Council and the Instituto Camoes and involved the commissioning and subsequent European touring and recording of four new works for quartet and electronics by four of Portugal’s leading composers – Pedro Rebelo, Miguel Azguime, Carlos Caires and Pedro Amaral. The four works, all with electronics, develop the scope and language of the string quartet repertoire. and examine the multiple possibilities of colour, texture and dramatic resonance that digital enhancement can bring. Through the compositions the quartet was keen to explore new ways of working with electronics and to develop new methods of performing practice. In Rebelo’s Shadow Quartet the quartet and composer explored the notion of prosthesis as an interface between the acoustic instruments and electronic sounds. The quartet’s resonant material derived from four suspended violins hung in front of the performers which also act as loudspeakers for the sounding of the work’s electronic part. Resonant analysis from each violin body was used to create pitch and harmonic structures and is explored throughout the piece. In Azguime’s Paraitre Parmi the composer together with the quartet experimented with aggregates of pitch to trigger much of the electronic pallet. The work is highly complex in its writing and required much experimentation in order to coordinate the digital interface with the players. These recordings represent several years of collaboration and experimentation and bring to its listener an extraordinary range of colour and timbral diversity, pushing to the limit the diversity of the quartet medium.