Quartet No.5 & No.4

**Michael Nyman** (*'The Piano'*) wrote Quartet No.5 & No.4 for **The Smith Quartet** in 2011 and Quartet No.5 receives its premiere recording on this CD. In his own words: "String Quartet No. 5 (2011) is the first of my quartets not only to have a subtitle but, more importantly, not to be based on pre-existing musical material. The subtitle 'Let's not make a song and dance out of this' refers to the fact that the piece is made up of movements that could either be considered as songs or dances or not! String Quartet No. 4 was composed in the winter of 1994/5 and, like my first three quartets, is based on pre-existing material. It is dedicated to the memory of Alan Bush who had a powerful influence on my musical and political world at the Royal Academy of Music between 1961 and 1964, and who died on 31 October 1995."