H82 4th Quartet: Cloud House (2017)
Commissioned by Snape Maltings for the Aldeburgh Festival.
First performed at Orford Church, Suffolk on 22 June 2018 by the Piatti Quartet, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival
Instrumentation: Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello
Duration: c. 9’
Programme note:
I wrote ‘4th Quartet: Cloud House’ last summer for nobody in particular. I am, however, more than happy that the Piatti Quartet have taken it on. It’s cast in a single movement and reflects my thoughts on the Cloud House in mid-Wales that has been left untouched for years, as if the occupants just walked out one day and never returned. It’s a house stranded high on a hill in a remote location with its roof in the clouds, full of things accrued over many years including a number of rusting fob watches, a collapsed harmonium and a box of watercolour paints. It puts one in mind of Miss Havisham’s Satis House; similarly decayed, but possibly not so grand. The piece takes the form of a walk through the house as the observer/listener notices the artefacts as they walk from room to room. ‘4th Quartet: Cloud House’ is dedicated to Ian Murray.
SH
January 2018
Past Performances:
22 June 2018 (World Première)
The Piatti Quartet
2018 Aldeburgh Festival
Orford Church, Suffolk, UK
24 June 2018
The Piatti Quartet
Castle Coole, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, UK
Reviews:
“Simon Holt’s Fourth Quartet Cloud House, here receiving its world premiere, conjured an imaginary walk through a real-life abandoned house on a Welsh mountain.
In the music’s sudden shocks and eerie repeating ticks one felt the strangeness of finding signs of life frozen in time – a book covered in dust here, a razor there. And sometimes a jolt of familiar harmony brought a feeling of the ordinary amid the strangeness.”
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph, 27 June 2008