Nyman’s Quartet No. 5

Resident musician Chase Spruill writes about the North American premiere of the Michael Nyman's Quartet No. 5:

In the early 1980s, Michael Nyman attended a performance by Arditti Quartet whose program housed a performance of the mighty Opus 133 Grand Fugue by Ludwig van Beethoven. Their performance and interpretation of the music left quite an impression on the composer who would later go on to remark that it was the most theatrical performance of the Fugue he’d ever seen or heard, leaving him with the impression that Beethoven was attempting to burst out of the music and compositionally transcend the confines and limitations of the sound world for a string quartet in order to create something orchestral. When Arditti Quartet commissioned Michael Nyman to write his first string quartet in 1985, it was their performance of Beethoven which helped inspire his idea to “exorcise the impressive and oppressive history of the string quartet” through a series of quotations by composers like John Bull, Arnold Schoenberg and Alex North. The end result was a pulse-pounding, relentless, hyper-rhythmic, uplifting and continuous world of sound that never allowed a listener’s ear to wander. Nyman wrote three more string quartets between 1988 and 1994 which touched on and explored inspirations from Scottish Folk Music to traditional South Indian rhythmic cycles. The 20 years after that were devoted to the continuous writing of film scores for acclaimed movies like Jane Campion’s The Piano and large-scale concert works for the Michael Nyman Band and world-class orchestras like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, but with no sign of whether he’d ever write for the combination of a string quartet ever again.
 
I had the fortune to begin a long-distance correspondence with the composer a couple of years back while premiering his newest chamber music arranged for the combination of piano, flute, clarinet, violin and cello. The plan was to premiere and to record these works over a period of a few years, and ultimately, to release these recordings the year of his 70th birthday, which would be part of a larger celebration of his career thus far. This plan led to a quiet dinner meeting I had with his manager who happened to be in New York City on business, and during this dinner, I got the answer I’d been hoping to hear:  “He’s got this intense notion of writing ten symphonies in one year and releasing recordings of them with The World Orchestra. Also, there’s a new string quartet!”  The piece was to be premiered in the UK by the Smith Quartet—champions of contemporary string quartet literature—but without being able to hear a recording of the new work, I asked her if she would kindly describe the piece for me. She went on to say it was a wild, six-movement exploration of song and dance which included ballads, tangos, and dances that would be dangerous to dance to.  I only had one question for her at that point:  When was the U.S. Premiere so I could hear this piece?  My entire drive back to Providence, I kept replaying her answer to my question in my head, which was something like,” “Oh, we haven’t planned a U.S. premiere of this piece yet. Do you have any friends that you think would like to play it?”  I was new to Community MusicWorks at the time, but as it happened, yeah, I had a couple of people I thought might be interested. Sebastian had been talking about the next season here at CMW and the possibility of a quartet program in 2014. He was enthusiastic about the idea of premiering a new work by Michael Nyman knowing it was the first string quartet to be written by the composer in almost 20 years.  It seemed like the kind of news that should go along with fireworks and balloons. When he asked if I’d like to be part of that program, I think it’s quite possibly the fastest I’ve ever said yes to anything.  He asked what the piece was like and I told him what I knew. One year later, we’re a few weeks away from the North American Premiere.

-Chase Spruill

Join us for the weekend-long celebration of Nyman's Quartet No. 5: