Sadie Harrison - A House of Countless Rooms

Sadie Harrison - A House of Countless Rooms
Five Poems for Malene 2023
After poems by Malene Sheppard Skærved
World Premiere
Kreutzer Quartet
(Peter Sheppard Skærved, Mihailo Trandafilovski,
James Sleigh, Neil Heyde)
with
Malene Sheppard Skærved
Live at
Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens
Saturday 17th February 2024
With thanks to
Neil Armstrong & Jim Aitchison
The project is funded by Arts Council England,
National Lottery Projects Grants
with support from Research England
and Falmouth University
in association with ‘Knowledge Exchange Violin’
www.peter.sheppard.skaerved.com
XIX V MMXXIV
A House of Countless Rooms
5 Poems for Malene
for string quartet
I Orchids
II Pulp and Rags
III Haunted
IV The English Garden
V Magic Carpet
Malene's poetry draws us into a world of fairytales, ghosts, exotic flowers and magic, by turns dark and melancholy, joyful and beguiling. Witches and trolls live side by side with girls working in a Victorian paper mill, a magic carpet ride takes us through English gardens of jasmine and foxgloves, a reverie on nursery-rhyme colours illuminates the intimate lives of her mother and grandmother. Although the poetry hovers at the edges of so many fantastical dreamworlds, it also reveals aspects of human love and loss with quiet insightfulness, poignant and honest.
Just as there are themes in common running through Malene's poetry, the movements of my quartet are threaded through with a single melody that takes on the character of each poem, transformed into the 'fanciful shapes' of Orchids, the deafening
'machines' of Pulp and Rags, the phantom's 'kiss on the nose' in Haunted, the swooping arial acrobatics of the Magic Carpet and, reminiscent of Delius's Walk to the Paradise Garden from Romeo and Juliet, the melody becomes increasingly ecstatic as a world of nature is brought into being by the words of the beloved in The English Garden.
A House of Countless Rooms is dedicated to Malene with love.