Attacca Quartet / Fri 26 Sept

Two-time GRAMMY Award winning Attacca Quartet brings to life its album, Of All Joys, in a spectacular Manchester debut.

Acclaimed for versatility and daring artistry, the Attacca Quartet embraces new ideas without rejecting the virtues of the musical past. As passionate champions of contemporary music, the quartet is known for innovative collaborations and performances on some of the world’s leading stages.

Of All Joys takes its title from an adapted lyric in John Dowland’s beloved madrigal Flow my Tears, bridging the past and present and uniting music of the Renaissance with modernist giants.

From Dowland to Glass, this evening weaves together threads through time. Along the way is Pärt‘s Summa, written originally for voices and inspired by medieval chant and Renaissance polyphony and Shostakovich’s eighth quartet. The 20 minutes of unbroken music look back through Shostakovich’s lifetime, quoting liberally from earlier compositions and built around a four-note motif derived from an abbreviation of his own name.

The journey concludes with Philip Glass’s String Quartet No 3 (Mishima), drawn from his score to Paul Schrader’s 1985 biopic on Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. Glass’s music mirrors the film’s structure, shifting between three phases of Mishima’s life to produce a kaleidoscopic portrait of his personal and artistic journey.

Our Inspirational Artists series is graciously supported by The Haworth Trust.