Pre-concert talk at 12pm
The Edinburgh Quartet presents the world premiere of Ben Lunn's String Quartet No. 2, The Tyrant's Might is Passing, paired with Caroline Shaw's Entr’acte - a programme that places a brand-new voice of defiance alongside a modern classic in dialogue with the string quartet's history.
Ben Lunn's second quartet arrives almost eight years after his first, prompted by a striking line from William Gallacher that felt newly urgent against today's political backdrop. Lunn conceives the piece as a meditation on defiance: the sense that the cruelty and upheaval we witness now may be the last desperate flailing of power on its way out. Spanning roughly 25 minutes, the work is deliberately spacious, giving room to properly sit with and reflect on events of such magnitude. It follows Lunn's earlier quartets The Whispered Yakka (inspired by Paul Summers' poetry on pit communities) and Kiek Pasauliu (drawing on Lithuanian poet Lidija Simkutė), continuing his pattern of using the quartet medium to respond directly to social and political realities.
Caroline Shaw's Entr'acte, written in 2011 for the Brentano String Quartet, takes a different route into similar territory: a contemporary composer's close, loving conversation with the past. The piece was inspired by the minuet of Haydn's Op. 77, No. 2 quartet, and Shaw described it as a meditation on a particular moment from that quartet, its structure riffing on the classical minuet-and-trio form while pushing it further. Throughout, listeners get glimpses of classical and baroque gestures that seem to have wandered into the wrong century, giving the piece its distinctive, shape-shifting character.
Together, the two works trace a thread from Haydn's era to our own: one composer looking back with wit and tenderness, another looking squarely at the present with resolve.
Duration
- Pre-concert talk at 12pm
- Performance at 12.45 to 1.30pm
Ticket Information
FREE event
Photo credit: Sandy Butler
In association with Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums.
With support from the Hope Scott Trust.
*Commissioned by sound
