Momenta Quartet’s CETL visit
This time I³ involved the visit of an extraordinary string quartet, based in New York and made up of four musicians of the highest standard. They are the violinists Miranda Cuckson and Anneliesa Place, the viola player Stephanie Griffin and the cellist Joanne Lin. Each of these four young players is pursuing an impressive solo and chamber music career in her own right. Between them they have a considerable array of recordings, awards, concerto a chamber music appearances and tours under their belt. Together they are among the most committed exponents of new classical music, passionate champions of Latin American music and well known for their collaborations with a new breed of composers, notably the Brazilian Arthur Kampela, the Indonesian Toni Prabowo and, most recently, Newcastle Universitys Agustín Fernández, whose String Quartet No. 1 ‘Montes’ they premièred in Philadelphia in 2007. It was on the basis of that successful collaboration that I³ director Fernández decided to invite the Momenta Quartet for a project in Newcastle. Also, given the Momenta’s recognised expertise in Latin American music, their visit seemed an ideal project to offer the ¡Vamos! Festival, the Northeast’s biennial celebration of Spanish, Latin American and Lusophone cultures.
Time was going to be limited for the Momenta in Newcastle, so it was necessary to restrict the number of participating composers. The opportunity of working with them was offered to a selection of postgraduate students at Newcastle and Durham, and those who accepted and produced pieces were Tom Albans, Eric Egan, Helen Papaioannou and Matthew Rowan.
The Momenta held their workshop on 10 July at Culture Lab, whose staff very kindly agreed to host the event. Within minutes it became apparent that this was no ordinary string quartet and no ordinary workshop. They had prepared the four works to a very high standard indeed, the technical challenges posed no problem to the players and they were determined to gain the clearest possible understanding of each piece in order to produce the best possible rendition. It was a pleasure to observe the young composers’ delight at having their music handled with such conscientiousness and respect, and at hearing it recreated to such unsuspected level of accomplishment.
In a happy turn of events, the recognition was mutual; by the end of the day, the Momenta were so impressed with the standard of the compositions that they decided they did not want to have to choose one work from each university for the performance, as is the I³ tradition: they wanted to perform them all. This necessitated a reconfiguration of their programme and, luckily for the ¡Vamos! Festival, two of the student compositions had a connection with Latin American culture, in that they had also – like Fernández’s String Quartet No. 1 – had taken their inspiration from the work of the Bolivian painter Fernando Montes.
The concert took place on 12 July at King’s Hall, Newcastle University. It was attended by three of the four student composers – Eric Egan was away in Darmstadt –, members of staff from the two universities, the film-maker Verónica Souto, Sarita Montes-Strike – daughter of Fernando Montes – and the general public. The occasion was a memorable success, as can be seen from The Journal’s enthusiastic review.
