A Single Sound of Strings

First performance:
Sacconi Quartet
Sacconi Chamber Music Festival, St Eanswythe’s Church, Folkestone
May 2026

Dedication:
to Ian Gordon, in celebration of his 80th birthday

Duration:
10 minutes

Programme Note:

This one-movement quartet, both poetic and restless in nature, is an exercise in close listening for the performer and the audience - it opens in the middle of a conversation, perhaps one already known to the players that the audience are just now overhearing. Like any good moment of eavesdropping, on a bus on at a restaurant, we are dropped into the turbulence without context and slowly realise what is unfolding. We put down our own conversation and cutlery to lean in just enough not to be noticed to hear better the four at the next table unfolding and refolding their personal dramas. Their discussion is at times argumentative, at others resolutory, as if we are witnessing four people who know each other well, and who are scrubbing around to find common ground. Do we find the single sound? Have we ever? Perhaps it is more of a question of, like the quartet hints at, continuing - through all of our tension and disappointment and challenge - to search for unison. (Megan Steller)

Image:
May Hands: Autumn’s Necklace (2024)