Program Notes

During the summer of 2005, when I was asked to compose my Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome was simply to try to imagine what a string quartet would sound like in front of an orchestra.  The difficulty was with the novelty of such a combination; it is a rarity, perhaps because of the challenge in maintaining the conversational nature of a string quartet as a chamber music ensemble, while trying to place them in the context of a traditional concerto, in which the soloist stands out as a singularly heroic figure.  In this piece, I tried to create both moments when each member of the quartet is treated as separate soloists and moments when the quartet itself is treated as a single entity.  
The piece can be divided up into three distinctive parts: the first section consists of a short introduction followed by a fast virtuosic music that showcases the quartet; the middle section begins with a separate quartet that emerges out of the orchestra, as they quietly accompany the quartet playing lyrically; the final section recapitulates musical material from the first section but features a more prominent role for the orchestra.  
The work was commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music program and premiered by conductor Paul Haas, with the Shanghai Quartet as the soloist at Carnegie Hall in the summer of 2006.