Instrumentation: string quartet
First Performance: March 7, 2023, University of Buffalo
Commissioned by the Parker Quartet in celebration of their 20th anniversary.
Written to accompany the quartet’s Beethoven cycle.
Duration: 4 minutes
rondo relay is short piece that plays with repetitions, ruptures, and returns, written for the Parker Quartet as it embarks on a Beethoven cycle in 2023. After the opening establishes a flowing, steady pulse, interruptions become a familiar presence, sometimes leading to detours and derailments. Short motivic strands with loose tie-ins to the op. 131 quartet, particularly the 2nd and 5th movements, take on rhetorical significance, with the opening music never far away as it comes back in cycles. I’ve always been attracted to the qualities of obsessiveness, unpredictability, and extreme contrasts in Beethoven; the ground under your feet is never truly quite stable as you think it will be, even as you anticipate its return.
Anthony Cheung