Solem Quartet presents music by 20th-century Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, and renowned American minimalist Steve Reich.
Henriëtte Bosmans’ only quartet (1927) is a highly emotive work in three short movements. All four instruments enjoy lyrical and heart-wrenching melodies, culminating in pulsating rhythmic energy that drives us towards the third movement’s climax.
Jonny Greenwood’s Suite draws from his 2007 film score for There Will Be Blood starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a 19th-century American oil magnate. Greenwood’s genre-bending music ingeniously depicts the film’s intense psychological drama, full of unsettling beauty and cold-blooded aggression.
Steve Reich’s Different Trains is built on an electronic soundscape of recorded trains, sirens, bells, and spoken voices which become melodies in the string quartet parts. Pondering his own Jewish heritage, Reich paints a vivid picture of the trains he took as a child in America during WW2 – a stark contrast to the holocaust trains he could have experienced had he been born in Europe.
