Seppo Pohjola

String Quartet No. 5

Seppo Pohjola (b. 1965) composed his fifth string quartet, lasting about 20 minutes, in February-March 2018. He was inspired to write it by a visit to the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam the previous year, where he was greatly impressed by the vast, comprehensive retrospective and especially the horrifyingly honest self-portraits. The soft opening tones bear an instruction alluding to Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht string sextet: the quiet music must be richly shaded. The notes in the canon-like part writing almost always change at different moments in each instrument, with a longer or shorter delay. The independent lines weave tightly together. The only dynamic is forte for minutes on end in the powerful closing section.