Something old, something new: Endellion String Quartet's 40th anniversary at Wigmore Hall

Endellion String Quartet

The Endellion String Quartet (Andrew Watkinson & Ralph de Souza violins, Garfield Jackson viola, David Waterman cello) is 40! And as part of the celebrations the group is at Wigmore Hall on 29 May 2019 with a programme which combines the traditional with the new. Alongside Beethoven's String Quartet in F major Op.18 No.1 (the first of his first published set of quartets), and Schubert's String Quartet in D minor (‘Death and the Maiden’), there are four new pieces, 40th anniversary commissions, A Myndin' by Sally Beamish, Ritus: Four Portraits for String Quartet by Prach Boodiskulchok, ENdellionIGMA by Giles Swayne and Vanishing Gold by Jonathan Dove.

'A myndin', in Scots, means the ‘remembering’ of a person, by giving them a small gift or souvenir, and Sally Beamish's piece is one of a group which she wrote in 2018 arising from her move from Scotland back to London, the mixing of remembering Scotland and the idea of re-connecting with friends and colleagues in London again.

Prach Boondiskulchok says of his piece 'Ritus is a set of four miniatures for string quartet, each dedicated to the individual members of the Endellion String Quartet, written to celebrate the ensemble’s Fortieth Anniversary. In each movement, the instruments of the quartet take turns at being the principal voice, depicting evocative elements of the different times of the year: Shoots, Crickets, Skein and Melting. An underpinning harmonic framework, derived from the analysis of the natural resonances of St. Endellion church in Cornwall (after which the quartet was named)'.

Jonathan Dove's piece is inspired by two small creatures, both of which may be extinct, the golden toad of Costa Rica and the golden coqui of Puerto Rico, whose two-note call is the starting point for the piece.

Giles Swayne's Endellionigma 'charts the development of a quartet as it evolves from four individual musicians to one integrated instrument'.

Full details from the Wigmore Hall website