Presentation of 21st-century Slovak music: Ľuboš Bernáth and Matej Sloboda

String Quartet No. 2 “Structures and Impulses”
“My second string quartet was created in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the death of Béla Bartók. This composer has fundamentally influenced my compositional thought up to this day, and I believe that for a long time he will continue to be in the center of my interest. I have tried to write a quartet that will incorporate Bartók’s characteristic compositional elements and idioms. At the same time, the main musical material is born logically and gradually from basic impulses, which in the end give the composition a real structure and shape.

To put it simply, the concept of fugue apparent in the fourth movement has been born out of individual partial cells of the first movement. This subsequently gives rise to tonality, while in the second and third movements there are elements having the character of an archetypal dance.” L’uboš Bernáth