The Chordos String Quartet, laureate of the Government Prize for Culture and Art, continues the central concert series of the 2024 season, "Three Sides of You", which is dedicated to reflecting the different states of humanity and to presenting some of the most significant composers of the twentieth century and the string quartets they created.

The second concert in the series - SUSICIZE invites us to come back to ourselves. Symbolically, the programme, which will take place on 2 November in the magnificent Treasury Hall of the Church Heritage Museum, is a time of concentration, a philosophical meditation, a search for a connection with oneself, so necessary in an ever-changing, rushing and confusing world.

This avant-garde 20th-century work, marked by calmness and a distinctive silence, is for the music connoisseur as well as for everyone who wants to explore and discover new musical sounds.

PROGRAMME

Luigi Nono. Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima  (1980)
John Cage. String Quartet In Four Parts  (1950)

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After a creative crisis that lasted several years, the Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924-1990) wrote a series of works that were completely different from what he had produced in the previous three decades. Among these works was the string quartet Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima, premiered in 1980 by the La Salle String Quartet, which was then very famous in Europe. Few works of that time have been as commented on and praised as this one. Thirty years later, music historian David Metzer hailed it as one of the seminal works of the 1980s, shaping a new phase in modernist music.

Diotima was a teacher of Socrates and is associated with the concept of time. The music is inspired by the lines of a poem by the famous German Romantic poet Fr. Hölderlin, which, like unspoken words or a meditation, remain only references in the score. Luigi Nono's exploration of early music and memories from the distant past as a source of pain and hope raises fundamental questions: 'Where am I and who am I?"

The String Quartet in Four Parts composed in 1950 by the American composer John Cage (1912-1992) is one of the last works in which the principles of uncertainty and chance that characterise his oeuvre have not yet fully taken root. For this quartet John Cage used a new technique he called "gamut". A fixed, immutable and individualised 'gamut' is created for each performer, and from their sequence a melody and a harmony emerge, which loses all traction and thus eliminates any sense of progression. After completing the first movement, he was so enthusiastic about the new method that he wrote: "This piece is like opening another door, the possibilities are endless."

The work is dedicated to fellow composer Lou Harrison. John Cage wanted to create a work that celebrated silence but avoided silence itself. The four movements of the quartet have links to the Indian perception of the seasons, where each season is associated with a particular force - that of creation, preservation, destruction or peace. This is how the programmatic titles came about:

2. Quietly Flowing Along - Summer
4. Slowly Rocking - Autumn
6. Almost Still this, like other works by John Cage, "clears and calms the mind, opening it to divine influence".

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   Organized by: Justas Bø

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