Last weekend, unfinished works formed the common thread of the fifth (Un)heard Music Festival, set up by the Matangi Quartet as a place for music that ‘overwhelms and surprises’.
The latter certainly applied to Imperfect Past, a ballet by Thom Stuart at the unfinished Fifth String Quartet by William Piper. Stuart’s choreography highlighted the essence of the string quartet: the prima ballerina was passed on like a melody by three dancers. Where the Viride Quartet sometimes merged into one voice, the dancers at times merged into one body.
The evening started with two unfinished string trios by Schubert and Mozart by the The Hague String Trio. They were the first – melodious – steps on a journey that became more exciting and urgent by the minute. Het Viride devotedly considered the neo-romanticism of Jan van Gilse, the last notes of Leo Smit – before the Nazis took him and his wife away to the Sobibor death camp – and Pijper.
That Schubert and Mozart did not complete their string trio, yes, but for the three Dutch composers it started to wreak havoc that these promising compositions had been nipped in the bud: with Smit and Pijper because of death and Jan van Gilse apparently saw no bread in it anymore. – he lived more than two decades after he wrote the last note of his string quartet.
injured bird
The concert builds on the only completed work, the world premiere of the string quartet transcendence by Kate Moore, a companion piece to Pijper’s piece. While composing, Moore envisioned a wounded bird trying in vain to fly again. Sometimes an instrument fluttered away from the musical gravity for a moment, but more often the Viride kept the injured bird pounding and relentlessly on the ground.
Completeness remains a quintessentially human idea: the suggestion that something can be perfect in itself. To Moore it seemed little more than a short cry, swallowed by the infinite. Overwhelming? check. Surprising? check.
#Overwhelming #unfinished #pieces #Hagues #Unheard #Music #Festival