Imagined Memories – Bîranînên Xeyalî

The Quartet, Imagined Memories is Yusuf Gawlick’s most intensely personal work: a musical offering to the biological mother he never knew. This new piece, which utilizes the entire range of possible string techniques, is a major essay of haunting and evocative beauty, representing the intersection of memories, both real and imagined, of three personalities whose paths crossed only briefly. To bring this dreamscape to life required, literally, the best string quartet in the world, whose technique and musical knowledge are all encompassing: the Hugo Wolf Quartett of Vienna, in whom the composer has found the ideal partnership, and to whom the work is dedicated. Imagined Memories is paired with one of the quartets that inspired it: Franz Schubert’s equally haunting Quartet in A minor (“Rosamunde”), D.804, which is directly quoted as an “act of memory”, along with echoes of the entire history of quartet writing.