String Quartet No.5 for 2 violins, viola and cello Op.126 (2014) c. 20'00"

Commissioned for The Emerson Quartet by Music Accord

First performed on September 27th, 2014 at the Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan by The Emerson Quartet

ABOUT

My 5th String Quartet Op.126 was commissioned by Music Accord for the Emerson Quartet, to whom the work is dedicated.

This Quartet, like much of my instrumental music, has no extra-musical program - it is as absolute and abstract as music can be – yet, at the same time, I have no doubt that my mindset while composing the piece and its resultant overriding elegiac tone was at least partly influenced by any number of depressing/terrifying events of the kind with which we are all bombarded daily, in what seems more and more like a world gone mad.

The work’s mysterious opening, marked “Limpido” (“still”) introduces a number of motives which are heard and developed throughout the quartet. Structurally, the Quartet is in one arc-like symmetrical movement consisting of two mostly slow sections flanking a fast section whose structure is, in and of itself, symmetrical. If we think of that central fast section as being akin to a scherzo and trio, then the reprise of the scherzo section is actually an intervallic inversion of its first statement, while the trio section divides at its midpoint, the second half being a mirror image of the first half.

REVIEWS

“Liebermann is among the most gifted of living American composers, and his Quartet No.5 is a strong, compelling and powerfully communicative work…We need to hear much more of Lowell Liebermann’s music in Chicago.”
Chicago Classical Review

“..the piece’s haunted tone is unmistakable…Liebermann’s writing is unambiguously tonal, even in its most dissonant moments, but that oft-noted fact is less important than the utterly idiomatic string writing and the profusion of melodies that are everywhere apparent. Even the melancholy is refined and polished…”
The Boston Globe

“The Liebermann was particularly interesting: an unsettling, darker opening, then a wild scherzo, and finally a lovely, richly harmonized section…”
The Seattle Times

“…a single symmetrical movement of two slow, lyrical laments that surround a heart of anger…The quartet’s sorrowful air at time felt strikingly morose, but it took a more seraphic turn with time, and ultimately beguiled.”
The New York Times

“Lowell Liebermann’s restless String Quartet No.5 received a haunting performance.”
The Aspen Times