Join us for an evening of electrifying repertoire featuring the Stenhammar Quartet, one of Scandinavia’s leading string quartets. Named for Wilhelm Stenhammar, one of Sweden’s most important composers at the turn of the 19th century, the quartet has travelled the globe presenting music both old and new. To date, they have made some forty recordings for Swedish Radio, participated in broadcasts on Swedish television, and been the subject of a documentary on the French music channel Mezzo. Their recordings for prominent record labels such as BIS, CPO, and Alba have met with much critical acclaim both in Sweden and internationally, earning the quartet two nominations at the Swedish Grammis Awards.
The quartet has commissioned music from some of the world’s leading composers, and their Winnipeg concert includes no less than two world premieres. Of particular note is the closing titular work Sketches of Shifting Landscapes, a new creation by Swedish-Canadian composer Örjan Sandred. A recipient of a fellowship from the highly prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2022, Sandred has produced a spectacular new composition for string quartet and interactive live electronics. With eight loudspeakers surrounding the concert space, the audience is immersed in a continually shifting sonic landscape. New colours and contexts reveal themselves through the quartet, but also in part through algorithms borrowed from artificial intelligence. At times, the computer “listens” to the quartet, adjusting elements like texture and harmony accordingly. In this way, new and unpredictable expressions of thematic material are unveiled at each performance.
The concert also features powerful works by other Canadian composers and a renowned American composer. Internationally celebrated Inuk artist Tanya Tagaq channels Inuit throat singing in her quartet Sivunittinni. Cree-Mennonite composer Cris Derksen tackles the appalling entitlement of early European settlers in White Man’s Cattle. Rounding out the program are Entr’acte by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw, and the premiere performance of Sleight of Hand, a new composition for string quartet and electronics by Winnipeg composer Gordon Fitzell.