Sound Laboratory: Ligeti Quartet – Phantom Voices

Amplified string quartet and electronic music explores the ways psychoacoustic effects can be exploited to make the whole seem greater than the sum of its parts. Two works by Jonathan Harvey frame this programme: In Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco where recordings of a bell and a human voice are electronically manipulated together, and in his last string quartet, creating new dimensions between the ensemble and audience. Pre-recorded sounds are also employed by Anna Meredith in her latest piece for string quartet, Tuggemo, named after an ancient Scottish word for a dense flock of birds or swarm of bees. The world premiere of Christian Mason’s Sardinian Songbook forms the centre piece of this concert, with the mysterious overtones and polyphonic singing of the cantu a tenòre.