A NOTE FROM KEVIN LAU

String Quartet No. 7, Surfacing

My last three string quartets were composed virtually back-to-back over a period of two years. Perhaps naturally, I came to see the Seventh Quartet as the final instalment in a trilogy of sorts, which began with the fantastical Fifth (The Train to Improbable Places), followed by the considerably darker Sixth (...like the stars in the firmament). In my mind, the Seventh offers dramatic closure to the musical and existential questions posed by these previous quartets, while simultaneously paving the way for new horizons.

The title was inspired by a sensation I can only describe as a kind of defiant euphoria. It is the feeling of emerging from the abyss into a bright, almost impossibly open space. At times, there is a violence to this surfacing, like a gasp of air after being underwater for too long. As a metaphor for healing, it is also fragile and by no means linear, requiring both hope and resolve to sustain.

The quartet opens with the simplest of motivic units: a rising semitone, followed by the same pattern a whole step lower. Housed within the framework of a loose passacaglia, this pattern comes to dominate the entire work via a series of variations that escalate in intensity and scale as the music unfolds. Punctuated by airy silences, the initial statement of this motive takes the form of a 'poppy' chord progression, on top of which an operatic first violin soars. Subsequent variations build in energy, culminating in an explosive fugal exposition that borrows freely from Baroque idioms - the first of several stylistic left-turns into the past. Far from being ironic or nostalgic, these deviations have a searching quality, emblematic of the tension between memory and present. At times, the memory turns nightmarish; a lyrical, child-like episode in the work's central section becomes increasingly fragmented and anguished. But near the end, a new melody surfaces; set against a joyous, Celtic-influenced accompaniment, this melody - which I have dubbed the 'Robin' theme - draws the music into a rejuvenated landscape just before the piece's resolute final measures.

The creation of my Seventh Quartet took place a month after an experience which left an indelible mark on my identity and sense of purpose. In the second month of his life, my son Robin was diagnosed with a serious disease that necessitated a liver transplant - eventually made possible by my wife, who donated a portion of her liver to save his life. After half a year spent in the hospital, our family returned home intact, filled with relief and gratitude - but also battered and haunted by what we had endured. While I often prefer to keep my artistic and personal worlds separate, I cannot help but view this piece through the lens of physical and emotional recovery - one in which virtuosity, by turns searing, defiant, and joyous, lays the groundwork for catharsis.

I am grateful to the Poiesis Quartet for commissioning this work. Their electrifying presence and transcendent interpretations are a perfect complement to the spirit of Surfacing.

PROGAM NOTES

SKY MACKLAY 
Many Many Cadences (2014)

“I am a very conceptual composer.  I like structuralist ideas that I can flesh out formally,“ says Baltimore-based composer, oboist, and installation artist Sky Macklay.  “That’s the excitement of composing for me.”  Currently teaching composition at the Peabody Institute, Macklay wrote Many Many Cadences in 2014 as a provocation.  She was interested in the musical moment we are trained to crave – the cadence, the point of arrival – and asked what happens when that moment is multiplied, stretched, delayed, or deliberately frustrated.  Written for the Spektral Quartet – who quickly gained a Grammy nomination with the album it opens – the piece takes a familiar expressive signal and subjects it to intense pressure. 

On the page, the work is daunting.  Rhythms splinter, pitches slide against one another, and the players are asked to hold conflicting musical impulses in balance.  The piece calls for extreme precision without rigidity: ensemble playing pushed to the edge of what can reliably cohere.  For listeners, the barrier is expectation.  This is not music that “resolves” in the traditional sense, even when it sounds as if it might.  The best way to listen is to let go of destination.  Hear the piece as a field of intensifying gestures – cadences not as endings, but as events, repeated, refracted, and left hanging in the air.

JOSEPH HAYDN
String Quartet in D, Op. 71 No. 2 (Hob.III:69) (1793)

On January 19, 1794, Haydn left Esterháza on his second journey to England, with new music in hand – several symphonies and six string quartets that became Opp. 71 and 74.  He was returning to London at the urging of the violinist-impresario Johann Peter Salomon, a Bonn-born virtuoso who had made London his base.  Salomon introduced Haydn to a public concert culture – not courtly or salon music-making – with expert players and audiences eager to pay for novelty.  Although dedicated to Haydn’s patron Count von Apponyi, the quartets reflect Salomon’s influence throughout.  His virtuoso violin technique shapes the music so clearly that the works are often spoken of as the ‘Salomon’ quartets in English-speaking countries and the ‘Apponyi’ quartets in German-speaking ones.

The D-major Quartet, Op. 71 No. 2 is the most brilliant of the set.  Broad in scale and extrovert in tone, it opens with two emphatic forte chords – a blunt signal to London audiences to stop chattering and listen!  The Allegro is built from octave leaps, combining good humor with technical flair.  The slow movement unfolds as a lyrical violin aria.  “Salomon plays quartets with more feeling and imagination, more taste, expression and variety than we ever heard them played,” wrote a London newspaper.  An octave-driven Minuet and an elegant finale bring this superbly crafted quartet to a confident close.

JEROD IMPICHCHAACHAAHA' TATE
Pisachi (Reveal): Six Epitomes for String Quartet (2013)                    

“I am a dedicated American Indian classical composer and pianist, and my mission is to create meaningful works that express American Indian experiences within classical music,” says composer and pianist Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate.  The citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma frequently writes within Western classical forms – symphonic, chamber, solo piano, opera to commissions from major ensembles and organizations across the U.S. – while grounding his musical language in Chickasaw stories, rhythms, and aesthetics.

His middle name, Impichchaachaaha', means “their high corncrib” and is his inherited traditional Chickasaw house name. 

“Pisachi – the Chickasaw word for Reveal,” Tate writes, “is composed in six epitomes (sections) and was originally commissioned to be performed within a slide show exhibit for the quartet ETHEL’s touring project entitled Documerica.  Pisachi was assigned to accompany images of the American Indian Southwest.  In doing so, the work draws specifically from Hopi and Pueblo Indian music, rhythms and form.  The opening viola solo is a paraphrase of a Pueblo Buffalo Dance and becomes material throughout.  Later, the work refers to Hopi Buffalo Dance and Hopi Elk Dance music. It is the composer’s intent to honor his Southwest Indian cousins through classical repertoire.”

SERGEI PROKOFIEV 
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 92 (1941)

During the Second World War, as German forces advanced toward Moscow following the collapse of the Hitler–Stalin non-aggression pact, the Soviet government evacuated many artists and intellectuals to distant republics.  In August 1941, in Nalchik – the provincial capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, beyond Georgia in the Caucasus and close to Turkey – Sergei Prokofiev encountered folk music he described as “very fresh and original.”  Although his main preoccupation was the monumental opera War and Peace, he found time to turn this discovery into one of his finest and most approachable chamber works.

Prokofiev set out to preserve the integrity of the traditional material in his Second String Quartet, resisting any urge to smooth its rough edges.  He aimed for what he called “a combination of virtually untouched folk-material and the most classic of classical forms, the string quartet.”  The opening movement is striding and purposeful, weaving two Kabardian themes into a clear sonata-form design.  Though not a string player, Prokofiev writes idiomatically, especially in the slow movement, which grows from an expressive, exotic love song first heard high on the cello.  Love songs are at the heart of this gentle music, written as war raged.  The violin melody in the central section is a shepherd’s tune.  The finale transforms plucked, strummed, and percussive folk ideas, opening with a vigorous Kabardian dance tune.  An impassioned, improvisatory cello solo passes through the ensemble, and by reversing the order of the returning themes, Prokofiev closes the quartet with the exuberant main dance.

— Program notes copyright © 2026 Keith Horner. 
Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca