Monday at Last with String Quartet and Percussion

Monday at Last is the concert concept in which Cecilia Zilliacus and Kati Raitinen invite guest artists to join them in programmes that combine new and older music. On this occasion, Monday at Last is joined both by the Zilliacus Quartet – of which Zilliacus and Raitinen are members – and by percussionist Agostinho Sequeira.

In David Lang’s stuttered chant, cello and percussion unite in a shared pulse with a hypnotic effect. In Boris Kerner, Caroline Shaw uses flowerpots of different sizes and shapes as percussion instruments in close interplay with the cello.

We hear Bo Linde’s flowing lyricism in Dance for violin and xylophone. More concentrated is Luboš Fišer’s Crux for violin, timpani and bells, which precedes Iannis Xenakis’s Rebonds, a landmark work in the modern percussion repertoire. In Ends Meet, the Portuguese composer Luís Tinoco brings a string quartet together with the rounded sonority of the marimba.

The concert concludes with Pavel Haas’s Second String Quartet, where Moravian folk music is interwoven with modernist elements – music full of energy and drive, yet also of profound seriousness.