String Quartet No 6 (2000)

…it's not a quartet at all but an octet: one "live" quartet interacts with one pre-recorded quartet relayed by loudspeakers (both in the case the Duke [Quartet]). Volans is a writer of staggering gifts. He has the courage to abandon familiar sound worlds and the skill entirely to convince. From its score, this 24-minute piece appears little more than a sequence of slow, sustained chords passed between two quartets, with one vital instruction that vibrato should only be used when marked. But this is to belie the effect: a "rocking" motion is established as the chordal texture is thickened or thinned, articulated only by the subtlest of dynamic change. The ear strains to distinguish the source, the sound balance so equal, the play of psycho-acoustics magical, peaceful, settling. The Duke were astonishing, assured…one of the most beautiful and haunting works I have heard for a very long time. Look out for it this autumn when released on CD on Black Box.