MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Music & the Arts

New Roger Reynolds Album

I had the pleasure of interviewing violinist Irvine Arditti for The Strad about his role in this fantastic new release of music by Roger Reynolds from Ekkozone records (for which I also wrote the liner note essay). He performs in WISDOM’s Sources, an expansive duo for violin and viola.

You’ve known Roger Reynolds and his music for many years now. Tell us a little about how you first connected and how your friendship and collaboration developed.

Irvine Arditti: Roger appeared at one of our concerts in Huddersfield’s new music festival in the early ’80s. We were playing music of Xenakis, whom I later found out Roger admired as much as I did. We were then a young, promising group rapidly gaining a reputation, and Roger offered us a quartet gratis if we agreed to programme it as much as we could.

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Filed under: Arditti Quartet, Roger Reynolds, The Strad

Arditti Quartet at 50

Thursday marks the 50th anniversary to the day that Irvine Arditti and his colleagues gave their first concert. The Arditti Quartet would go on to become one of the leading advocates for new chamber music — from Ligeti, Xenakis, and Stockhausen (including the Helicopter Quartet) to their latest commissions from Toshio Hosokawa and Cathy Milliken.

My program text for the official 50th-anniversary concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal can be found here.

The program:

Jonathan Harvey (1939–2012)
String Quartet No. 1 (1977)

Cathy Milliken
In Speak for String Quartet (2023) world premiere
Toshio Hosokawa (*1955)
Oreksis for Piano Quintet (2023) world premiere
Intermission
Harrison Birtwistle
 (1934–2022)
The Tree of Strings for String Quartet (2007)

Filed under: Arditti Quartet, chamber music, Pierre Boulez Saal

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