Program Notes

The Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra is a single-movement work commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony for the Shanghai Quartet in 2005.  Although this instrumental combination is rather unusual, the quartet is featured as a soloist in a fairly conventional manner of a standard concerto.  The challenge, however, was to maintain the identity of the string quartet within the traditional context of a soloist. 

The piece is roughly divided up into three sections: the first section consists of a short introduction followed by a fast virtuosic section; the middle section features the lyrical side of the quartet, while the final section loosely recapitulates the first section.