Philippe Manoury’s love story with the string quartet is a relatively recent one. He wrote his first quartet in 1978 while he was studying, but the work was disregarded; his first official quartet is from 2010. It is entitled Stringendo, which isan Italian word indicating an acceleration in tempo and it was performed by the Arditti Quartet, the contemporary music world’s legendary group.

Tensio was premiered the same year (all of his quartets have Italian names), a tension leading to a fascinating experimentation with the possibilities of timbre and quartet harmonics associated with electronics. In 2013 the Arditti Quartet premiered his third string quartet at the Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo. Its title is Melencolia, which echoes the famous engraving by Albrecht Dürer. Manoury is also inspired by Dürer in the mathematical construction of the piece, during which the musicians also play crotales. It is a dreamlike piece that evokes the difficult to translate German word “Sehnsucht”, a specific type of nostalgia.

Fragmenti is his fourth string quartet. It will be played at the Philharmonie de Paris, again by the Arditti Quartet, as part of the String Quartet Biennal in collaboration with ProQuartet, the European Centre for Chamber Music. Note that the Austrian premiere of Fragmenti will take place at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, also with the Arditti Quartet.

Have a look at the score