Michael Finnissy’s Second Quartet is ‘based on a compact Haydn model’ – originally intended to be the ‘Lark’, Op.64, No.5 – and traces of its antecedent can be discerned within it. By contrast, the Third Quartet incorporates actual birdsong, both transcribed and recorded, in the composer’s response to the natural world and man’s place in it: the instruments gradually fade out, to leave only the sound of birds.
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