Anyone who has seen Alfred Hitchcock’s famous Psycho, with its key moments enhanced by Bernard Herrmann’s extraordinary soundtrack of strident, dissonant violins, knows how bowed string instruments have a palette of disturbing sounds. With this concert entitled Musique d’épouvante (“music of dread”), the Quatuor Molinari invites us to explore them.
Three strong works on the programme here. Shaking up tradition at the time of its creation in 1962, the 1st quartet of the Polish composer Krzyszstof Penderecki’s “ String Quartet No. 1” takes us into a noisy universe, at the time called “sonorism”. Created in 1981, Canadian R. Murray Schafer’s “String Quartet No. 3” is a work that moves in every sense of the word since, in addition to its dramatic power, its karate shrieks and its various onomatopoeias, it includes scenic shifts that contribute to its sonic spacialization. Finally, from 1970, the quasi-mythical Black Angels by American composer George Crumb presents 13 tableaux in which good and evil confront each other in a bitter battle, during which tam-tams, glass harmonicas, maracas, and glass sticks lend a hand to the strings.
Other performances of this show:
• Thursday, February 20, 7 h 30 p.m. at Maison de la culture Frontenac
• Sunday, February 23, 3 p.m. at Maison de la culture du Plateau Mont-Royal
