Ruth Crawford’s amazingly original String Quartet of 1932 launched the second programme of Strings in the Earth and Air, featuring the Ligeti Quartet.
Harrison Birtwistle’s weighty Duo for Eight Strings (for viola and cello, but sounding like twice as many players) was the centre-piece, and they concluded with my
2016 quartet Memory is the seamstress. Inspired by some brilliant and witty lines from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando on the unruly variousness of our perceptions and memories from moment to moment, six movements grasp at sharply contrasting qualities of touch, pace and feeling. Watch the video of my piece below, introduced by a short conversation with composer Louise Drewitt about the ideas behind the piece. (Later in the year you can see the whole concert when it’s released on youtube.)
Jeremy Thurlow - composer 