Coming up in just a few days Winnipeg audiences will have the opportunity to see one of the genuinely great string quartets on the stage today.
The Swedish Stenhammar String Quartet will be in Winnipeg performing two concerts. One for Virtuosi and one for Winnipeg's GroundSwell.
The concert for Virtuosi takes place this Sunday, November 3rd at 2:30pm at the Wag-Qaumajuq's Muriel Richardson Auditorium. Called Stockholm, Paris, Prague:1900, this concert will feature music by Germaine Tailleferre, Bedrich Smetana, and The Stenhammar Quartet’s namesake Wilhelm Stenhammar.
The concert for GroundSwell takes place on Monday, November 4th at 7:30pm at the Murial Richardson Auditorium at the WAG. This concert will feature two world premiere works, by Manitoba composers Örjan Sandred and Gordon Fitzell, as well as music by Inuit Throat singer and composer Tanya Tagaq, Indigenous cellist and composer Cris Derksen and American composer Caroline Shaw.
The two concerts will display the Stenhammar Quartet’s mastery at switching between the more traditional String Quartet literature and contemporary music for string Quartet.
This collaboration between the GroundSwell and Virtuosi is the culmination of a couple of years of hard work.
Composer Örjan Sandred won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022 and decided to celebrate this very auspicious prize by putting on a GroundSwell concert.
Sandred, reached out to the Stenhammar Quartet in Sweden to see if they would be willing to come to Canada and perform a string quartet for them. The response was an overwhelming yes. Sandred then asked his dear friend and colleague at the Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba Gordon Fitzell if he would also be willing to write a quartet for the group. Fitzell jumped at the chance to write something for them.
The quartet by Örjan Sandred called Sketches of Shifting Landscapes and the Quartet by Fitzell called Sleight of Hand, that were written for the Stenhammars will see their world premiere performances on Monday, October 4th.
Having such a prestigious ensemble here in Winnipeg was quite a coup for GroundSwell, knowing this, they reached out to Virtuosi Concerts to see if they would be interested in holding a concert featuring the Stenhammars. Virtuosi agreed, and the result is that the quartet will have an opportunity to display their wonderful ability to perform more traditional literature written for String Quartet.
The two premiers on the program both make use of technology. Örjan Sandred’s piece Sketches of Shifting Landscapes breaks new boundaries with the use of AI. As Stenhammar violinist Per Öman says, “We are playing normally, and the AI is listening in on us and taking things, we do and twisting them, so it is like a fifth member on the quartet.
Gordon Fitzell’s Quartet Sleight of Hand makes use of electronics as well. It is inspired by the life of his maternal grandfather, and his creative spirit.
Henry Mueller (Fitzell’s grandfather) was a rural Manitoban farmer. He was also a self-taught designer and builder, and throughout his life built and created items such as small rockets, a handmade billiard table and even his own golf cart. He also kept up with the latest technological innovations and would make use of this knowledge to create short films that the family would sit down and watch.
As Fitzell describes the piece, “Sleight of Hand, for string quartet and electronics, is intended to reflect the playfully mischievous nature of my grandfather’s creative diversions, as well as the sense of nostalgia that they evoke.”
GSwell will also be presenting music written by the Inuit Throat Singer Tanya Tagaq. Sivunttinni (2015) was arranged from Tagaq’s song of the same name for string quartet by the arranger Jacob Garchik. It was originally arranged for the Kronos String Quartet. The quartet version replicates the sound of Inuit throat singing by making use of repeated rhythms and sounds made on the string instruments that are comparable to the sounds of throat singers.
The last Canadian work on the program is Cris Derksen’s White Man’s Cattle. (2019) The piece weaves in old audio recordings into the string quartet texture. As Öman says of the audio, "The audio is recorded from a landowner in the early 1920s... today, politically it feels awkward to hear it, but when weaved into the quartet it makes for a very interesting piece.”
Rounding out GSwell’s program on Monday, November 4th will be music of the American Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw. Her piece Entr'acte (2011) is inspired by Haydn’s op. 77 no 2 String Quartet. It makes use of material to come from the minuet movement and uses it as a jumping off point, as the piece morphs into something completely different.
Sketches of Shifting Landscapes as presented by GroundSwell is sure to be a feast for the ears. The remarkable playing of the Stenhammar quartet combined with the use of this advanced technology is sure to completly engage and keep audiences in rapture.
For more details on GroundSwells’s upcoming concert click here.