2 mins
Meeting of the minds
A string quartet that brings encounters between the French musical greats to life
On the beat
FAREWELL MAESTRO: Bernard Haitink makes his final speech to the players of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on 17 April 1988, stepping down from the chief conductor’s role he had occupied since 1963. The Dutch musician, who died on 21 October aged 92, remained closely associated with the Concertgebouw and was its conductor laureate until 2014. Haitink began his career as a violinist before turning to conducting. Photo: Rob C. Croes/Anefo
HOUGH PHOTO GRANT HIROSHIMA. TAKÁCS PHOTO AMANDA TIPTON
COMPOSER Stephen Hough
WORK String Quartet no.1 ‘Les Six Rencontres’
ARTISTS Takács Quartet
DATE 8 December 2021
PLACE Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Samueli Theater, Mesa, CA, US bit.ly/2YNzstM
Stephen Hough
Takács Quartet
‘There isn’t a composer living who wouldn’t be daunted by the task of composing something alongside Ravl and Dutilleux,’ admits British composer and pianist Stephen Hough, whose first string quartet, ‘Les Six Rencontres’, will be recorded by the Takács Quartet together with works by the two French composers. The work will be premiered at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. ‘The Takács put a lot of trust in me to compose a work that they had already committed to recording; I hope to live up to it,’ Hough says.
‘Somehow we think of Ravel and Dutilleux in the same stable. But there was a substantial social, political and musical gap between them. This gap was what I wanted to explore. And what filled it was Les Six,’ he says, referring to the group of six composers who dominated the French interwar musical scene. There are no direct quotes from the composers in Hough’s piece, but rather flavours of the potential interactions between their sound worlds, hence the word rencontres (‘meetings’ in French) in its title. The work appropriately has six movements, and explores spaces such as the boulevard, park, hotel, theatre, church and markets.
Instead of existing string quartet sketches, it was those of a wind quintet that Hough ‘recast’. ‘The first movement’s Stravinskian accents are very much wind conceived.’ As for the second movement, the flautando marking recalls the flute. But the world of the string quartet was a whole other avenue to explore: ‘It’s the most wonderful format: both rich and clear. And the dialogue is wonderful.’ As for his own interaction with the Takács, Hough says, ‘They’ve already been in touch with questions about the piece. This is a dream for a composer. It makes me very excited to hear what they will do with it.’