NODE / Brian Cliff Olguin for Ultima
Ultima x Oslo Quartet Series: Cikada
Cikada String Quartet I Fran Barajas I Rebecca Saunders I György Ligeti
A chance to hear Cikada String Quartet’s first concert featuring a new permanent line-up of Karin Hellqvist and Sara Övinge (violins), Bendik Bjørnstad Foss (viola) and Torun Sæter Stavseng (cello).
The programme reflects the lifespan of the quartet as it has evolved over more than 30 years, with threads that connect modernist icon György Ligeti via the leading contemporary composer Rebecca Saunders to the new generation, represented by Spanish-Colombian Fran Barajas.
From Ligeti’s ‘paradoxically continuous sound’, as the composer described it, to Saunders’s motifs buried beneath unstable shifting, sliding layers, and Barajas’s recomposed fragments from his earliest attempts at composing, the pieces are chosen by Cikada to challenge their own ability to express psychologically complex, dramatic musical events.
Programme
György Ligeti: String Quartet No. 2 (1968)
Rebecca Saunders: Unbreathed (2017)
Fran Barajas: The Quartet in My Life (2021)
Additionally, the programme will include the upcoming VIVE Quartet performing a five-minute excerpt from Rolf Wallin’s collection of string quartet miniatures, Curiosity Cabinet. Fran Barajas will take part in a Q&A hosted by Kaja Bjørntvedt, former director of the Oslo Quartet Series.
Cikada String Quartet. Photo: Anna-Julia Granberg.
Fran Barajas. Photo: Celia Recio Revert.
György Ligeti. CC.
Rebecca Saunders. Photo: Astrid Ackermann.
Performers
- Cikada String Quartet
- VIVE String Quartet
Composers
- Rebecca Saunders
- György Ligeti
- Fran Barajas
- Rolf Wallin
Moderator
- Kaja Bjørntvedt
In collaboration with
- Cikada
- Oslo Quartet Series
