Ragazze Quartet plays both classical and modern string quartet repertoire: inspired and on the highest level. With attractive but unconventional programmes the quartet has come to be one of the most fresh and leading voices in the world of classical music.
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SUN 30 JUL, 7:00pm
Terres Vibrantes Festival / Charbonnières les Vieilles / FR
Album full of works by Garth Knox

Together with ground-breaking composer and violist Garth Knox, Ragazze released two world premiere recordings of Knox’s work and five other recent works by this insatiably curious and innovative composer.

 

Garth’s composition ‘Four Into Twenty’ is written specifically for the Ragazze Quartet and captures the resilient spirit of the 1920’s & 2020’s.

 

Other pieces on this recording include ‘Satellites’, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, exploring contemporary string techniques inspired by different aspects of space as well as ‘Quartet for One’, performed by Knox himself, where each string of a viola represents a member of the string quartet.

 

Watch and listen to a conversation between Rosa and Garth Knox on the album below. For (english) subtitles watch video on youtube.

 

Also below, watch our ‘Lockdown Blues’ videoclip (the third movement from ‘Four into Twenty’), which we filmed in 2021.

Garth Knox
Garth Knox is at the forefront of the new music scene in many fields. Drawing on his vast experience as viola player of the Arditti Quartet and the Ensemble intercontemporain and his close collaboration with most of the leading composers of today, he has become a unique performer of music of many different styles, ranging from minimalist understatement to the cutting edge of new techniques and new technologies.

More recently thanks to his interest in the viola d’amore and the medieval fiddle, his repertoire has opened up to the music of the past (medieval, baroque) which he persuasively brings into the present, and his irish/scottish roots enable him to dialogue with traditional celtic music without complexes. He has always felt at home as an improviser, and now more and more so as a composer also, deploying his musical ideas as innovative instrumental theatre.
'An intriguing album'
Trouw
‘Several of these pieces have been previously recorded, but not both the sense of enjoyment as radiated by the Ragazze or Knox himself. Vividly recorded (..) his new release is both provocative and engaging, and can be warmly recommended.’
Gramophone
‘Strong in all pieces is that Knox does not succumb to a cheap neo-style and that the playful side of his music can be there.’
Opus Klassiek
'The Dutch Ragazze Quartet is completely inside Knox’s tonally tinged, mercurial music, which – aided by a close, lifelike recording – is presented to the listener with ideal clarity and enormous panache.'
The Strad