string quartet

The third quartet resembles the second in the structure of its movements, born from an alternation between couplings of high and swift, and deep and slow. This alternation of musical style represents the aggression I perceived in Bacon’s portraits of various cardinals, of which the disturbing quiet of certain colours of violet and cardinal red, the brutality of the black tones, the sombre strokes that speak of Bacon figure here as harmonies that are violently juxtaposed with gnarled, aleatoric ponticelli.

René Koering