Hayes, Morgan: Dances on a Ground. String Quartet
£11.00
Commissioned by Bromsgrove Concerts with financial assistance from Arts Council England
1st perf: Smith Quartet, Artrix, Bromsgrove, 27 February 2009
Favoured by English composers from Purcell to Vaughan Williams and Britten, the ground-bass form receives a contemporary makeover in Morgan Hayes’s Dances on a Ground. Artfully four-square, a cello ostinato stays stubbornly true to its original thoughts. Meanwhile, above it a capricious ensemble of two violins and viola swaggers its way through flights of melody and jumpy pizzicati to an ecstatic conclusion. Commissioned by Bromsgrove Concerts with funding provided by Arts Council England, Dances on a Ground was first performed by the innovative Smith Quartet at the Artrix, Bromsgrove, on 27 February 2009.
… Morgan Hayes’s punchy little Dances on a Ground …
Geoff Brown The Times, 14 January 2010
The Wu String Quartet caught the capering, anarchic energy of Morgan Hayes’s Dances on a Ground very well.
Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph, 14 Jan 2010
The evening’s other component was provided by the Wu Quartet – a capable ensemble that brought a stealthy humour and a teasing sense of anti-climax to Morgan Hayes’s Dances on a Ground (2009).
Richard Whitehouse, Classicalsource.com