Henry B. Stewart and "Threnody/Images"

Whenever we learn a new work from the great quartet repertoire, we always look forward to finding each composer's signature voice--the way they create melodic lines, or end cadences, or have distinctive rhythmical patterns.  It's also fun to discover how composers influenced each other, and to hear references made to their teachers or colleagues.  Which tricks did Mozart learn from the Haydn quartets, for instance?  Or how did Shostakovich create his rhythmic pulses differently to Bartok's?  For young composers, finding one's individual voice takes years of practise and experimentation.  From all of the entries we received, we were impressed by how much we could learn about the composer's personality through their music.

The quartet Threnody/Images came to us from Henry B. Stewart, a student at Goshen College in Indiana.  Written in two movements, Henry sent two images to accompany his score.  These two images were central to the inspiration for his piece.  The first movement, "Threnody I" was accompanied by a photograph of a woman.  Photograph by Gary Goldberg:

The second movement was based on a hallucination of a fire that Henry experienced during a state of delirium as a child.  Henry explains of his experience, "My vision was of a great, terrible, black fire on the horizon of an empty plain.  The [second] movement begins by falling into delirium, then the unsettling plain is heard in the syncopated section, followed by the building intensity of the fire to its full, raging power."  Digital sketch by Mohammad Mahdi Rassoulipour:

In Henry's music, we found much of this intense power as part of his composer's voice.  His music immediately captured our attention not through loud noises or musical pyrotechnics, but rather through an uneasy quietness and sense of foreboding in his piece.  We recorded the first movement of Threnody/Images with its quietly dramatic opening. The cello begins with a low C drone, followed by a haunting viola solo that takes shape over tremolando effects in the violins.  The opening of this movement reminded us of Shostakovich, sparse and cold, before warming up and developing into an angst-ridden climax of chords in the upper registers of the strings.

Henry is a sophomore at Goshen College, where he is dual major in biochemistry and music composition.  He is a composition student of Dr. Jorge Muñiz of Indiana University South Bend.  Threnody/Images is his first work for string quartet.

Henry B. Stewart Q&A

Riho Maimets & "Sanctus"

Sanctus is a quartet in five movements, and takes musical influences from a wide range of religious and ethnic musics, including Eastern Orthodox chant, Renaissance motets, and Yiddish song.  Over the course of the competition, we received many compositions which used musical influences other than the "western classical music idiom" as their source of inspiration, particularly folk or ethnic influences.  From such a wide field of international composers, it was fantastic to receive string quartets written in the style of Egyptian music, Irish donegal fiddling, Mexican music, American bluegrass, and Chinese music, for instance.  Sanctus particularly struck us, not only for the way Riho successfully transferred folk and ethnic music into the genre of string quartet, but also for the overall mood of mysticism and spirituality he created.

For the recording, we chose to perform the second movement of Sanctus, which actually seems to be the least "mystical" of the movements in the quartet, instead reminding us of a spirited klezmer scratch band.  After a mesmerising cello solo in the first movement (written in the style of Ashkenazim liturgical singing), the cello then leads into the second movement, starting with its 3/4 dance meter.  Throughout the dance, short solo melodies pass between instruments, and we all get a chance to have our klezmer moment!

A composer of Estonian and Canadian background, Riho attended both the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, where he currently studies under Christos Hatzis.  Having taken lessons and masterclasses from Arvo Pärt, Krzysztof Penderecki, and R. Murray Schafer, he continues the exploration of mysticism in his music.  He is the winner of the 2011 Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music.

Riho Maimets Q&A

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