Unity in Distress

Programme Notes

I composed this piece in the spring of 2020, during the height of the global COVID-19 lockdown. It was a time when so many people faced profound challenges—grappling with isolation, the loss of loved ones, and the erosion of livelihoods. Though we were each experiencing these hardships in our own separate spaces, there was a collective emotional thread that united us all.

In this composition, the string quartet plays with intense, unified passion, as though to give voice to the shared anguish of that time. The entwined melodies symbolize the way our suffering, though experienced in isolation, was part of a larger human struggle. The quartet becomes a vessel through which we can all express the pain and uncertainty we faced, together in spirit, if not in proximity.

– Frank Horvat