First String Quartet.
Diana Hamilton, a leading figure in Arran’s music as teacher, conductor, performer and more recently as a national examiner, has composed a string quartet, due to receive its first performance on Sunday September 30th. This is an exciting event for Arran – and perhaps for Diana, too, for whom this is a new venture. When she was studying percussion and piano at the RSAMD there was no composition class on offer except for those taking it as a main subject, so as a teacher, she had much sympathy for her students when ‘invention’ was made compulsory in the music exam syllabus. She realised that even her best students were ‘getting stuck’ on the problems of writing music because they were not familiar with the principles of harmony and musical structure, and began to write her string quartet in an effort to see what the stumbling blocks were. Almost at once, it became clear that even to make a start was quite difficult. Once a form is established, it can be built on – but how does one find a first idea? Some kind of motif was needed. Rather than look for any vague inspiration of the cuckoo-in-spring kind, Diana turned to the structure of music itself. To put one basic building block on another seemed a simpler approach than trying to conceive an abstract idea.
Two jazz intervals provided a start-point – a major and minor seventh. That may seem a complex idea, but the chords will sound easy and familiar to anyone with a taste for jazz. As a cellist herself, Diana worked with friends who played violin, viola and a second cello, and started to put the emerging ideas onto a computer programme. She found that one small piece of invention led to another, and a bigger structure started to form. The result is exciting. The sevenths underlie establish the first movement and the second uses ninths in a gentle, lyrical construction The third draws on Diana’s talents as a percussionist to great effect, plunging into an exotic tango that then shifts into a jazzy waltz.
The Hamilton First String Quartet is a highly attractive, beguiling piece. Its world première will take place at a concert in the Community Theatre, Lamlash, on Sunday 30th September. Tickets at £8.00 will be available online at the Theatre and Arts Trust website. http://www.arranart.com/atat/ or from the Book and Card Centre in Brodick, or at the door on the night of the performance. Doors will be open at 7.00 for a start at 7.30 pm.
The concert will also feature a piano quartet (piano, violin, viola and cello) by Josef Suk, a piece full of the warmth and richness of the Romantic period, and such string favourites as Massenet’s Meditation from Thais, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and Monti’s Czardas.
Two of our local singers, alto Aileen Wright and baritone John Cruikshank, will be singing songs by English composers, Elgar, Quilter, Vaughan Williams and Warlock as well as German Lieder by Schubert and Schumann, accompanied on the piano by Douglas Hamilton.
Diana is delighted that the McLellan Festival has been willing and able to include this concert in their 2012 programme, and equally delighted that friends from the Eumalia Ensemble, professional string players, led by the violinist, Angus Anderson who has regularly performed on Arran in the Summer Serenade and other events, have been willing to come to Arran for this event. The viola player, John Harrington, has been the lead viola in the RSNO for many years and his daughter, Sarah, who comes to play the cello, plays in the Scottish Opera Orchestra. Both John and Sarah have had many holidays on Arran. Jan Anderson, a friend of Diana’s from days at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music (now the Royal Scottish Conservatoire), also comes to play the cello. Jan teaches the cello in Renfrewshire.
