The Zenne Quartet performs the quartets of contemporary Belgian composer Walter Hus.
Within Walter Hus's series of string quartets, his tenth string quartet, Paysages pour un ange égaré, is certainly something of an outlier, if only because of its longer title and its more atmospheric character. All his previous quartets are characterized by short, laconic titles centred around an abstract concept (la Théorie, le Désir, le Miroir, la Folie, la Vague, Malinconia, Jeunesse, l'oubli, le rêve...). In that series of titles, Paysages pour un ange égaré seems not quite to fit. It evokes images, questions and atmospheres. An angel wandering through landscapes, searching for traces...
Hus makes this audible through a form that is highly unusual for a string quartet: a suite consisting of no fewer than 19 consecutive pieces of music, each telling its own story and each contrasting strongly with the others, yet together creating a kind of trance that results in an almost cinematic experience.
Hus wrote the work during the final months of his wife Marie Brouchot's life, and it is dedicated to her memory.
The Belgian ensemble Zenne Quartet (Claire Bourdet, Chikako Hosoda, Karel Coninx and David Poskin) has a very wide repertoire, ranging from Mendelssohn and Beethoven to
Morton Feldman and Shostakovich. The range is further expanded with the care it takes to favor very young composers like Fanny Libert, Thomas Foguenne or Giuliano Bracci.
Walter Hus (born in 1959) is a Belgian contemporary pianist and composer. In the 1980s, he co-founded the avant-garde group Maximalist with composers Peter Vermeersch, Eric Sleichim,
Jean-Paul Dessy, and Thierry De Mey. Since the 1990s, he has focused on classical composition for opera, dance, theater, and film, collaborating with orchestras, ensembles, writers, visual artists, choreographers, directors, etc. (but also with musicians from the worlds of pop, rock, techno, and jazz): Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas, Roxane Huilmand, Jan Ritsema, Guy Cassiers, Needcompany, Hybrid Dance Company, Ben Okri,
Peter Greenaway, Jozef Devillé, Chris Ware, Tale of Tales,
Frederic Rzewski, Fatoumata Diawara, Guo Gan, DJ Push, Peter Krüger, Manu Riche, Spectra Ensemble, Arditti Quartet, Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra... Since 2000, he has been exploring the expressive possibilities of the Decap Orchestrion, an ensemble of acoustic instruments (organs, accordions, percussion) that are automated and controlled by computer.
