String Quartet No.1: The Awakening (Preview)

String Quartet No.1: The Awakening (1994)
String Quartet No.1: The Awakening sees the string quartet augmented by the incorporation
of an accompanying digital audio part that draws out the inherent musicality of both Inuit
throat singing and locomotives. Hatzis samples these sounds in ways that can give the
impression of vague memories materialising and then receding, while in other moments they
come into sharp focus, the rhythmic nature of these sound sources becoming a driving force
alongside the quartet as the piece accumulates momentum and urgency. At other times the
quartet’s material is underpinned by synthesizer textures that appear in turn as cavernous
low chords, playful twinkling, or mutated simulations of ricochet bowing that extend the
timbral palette of the live players. The emotional terrain of the work ranges from poignant
to hostile to light-hearted, with these shadings realised through demanding but captivating
string writing that employs fluid, microtonal glissandi, forceful tremolo bowing and
expressive, mournful melodic lines. After trading statements with the quartet in the work’s
energetic climax, the digital audio departs, leaving the unaccompanied players to see out a
final extended passage that reprises the work’s sombre thematic material.
String Quartet No.1: The Awakening was commissioned and premiered by the Smith
Quartet, with funding support from the Canada Council and the London Arts Board (UK).
The premiere performance was given at St Alsege Church, Greenwich, London, UK on 11
June 1994. It has also been recorded by the St Lawrence Quartet for the EMI Classics album
Christos Hatzis: Awakening.
The composer writes:
String Quartet No.1: The Awakening was a turning point in my career as a composer. It was
composed at a time in my life which could best be described as a crossroads — musical
and otherwise. The two most prominent and immediately recognizable references in this
work are Inuit throat singers and locomotive engines. The former had been haunting
me since 1992, the year I worked on a CBC radio documentary, The Idea of Canada. It
was then that I first became exposed to the chanting and vocal games of the native
PE117 – v