FACULTY OF LAW Lucian Moraru, string quartet & percussion

FACULTY OF LAW

Lucian Moraru, string quartet & percussion

SonArt Edition 2019

by Helen Tuckey

Romanian violist and arranger Lucian Moraru studied in Bucharest, then the Netherlands and Great Britain. He has an extremely diverse musical skill set, working as a violist in orchestras, chamber groups and as a soloist and as a studio producer, as well as substantial experience as an arranger for a diversity of musical instruments and genres.

Faculty of Law is his own 7-minute single movement work for string quartet and percussion. It was composed in 2019 for the 160th anniversary of the founding of the law school in Bucharest.

The work opens with great urgency and energy, underpinned by appealing sophisticated jazzy rhythms. In true legalese manner, the instruments then become almost verbal and rhetorical at times, with menacing relentless percussion continuing the forward drive. The texture thins and the music gradually melts into harmonics with various pianissimo percussive ostinato patterns in the viola. A section in B minor marked Moderato amabile follows in completely contrasting style in a folky, renaissance 6/8 time, with tambourine and tom tom, after which a virtuosic Allegro section crashes in, with much tension and great use of a variety of string and percussion textures. This is interrupted by a brief excursion into the traditional student drinking song Gaudeamus Igitur, quoted more at length by Brahms in an eerily parallel work, the Academic Festival Overture. The final Coda mirrors the opening, ending with impressive wit and energy.

This is a truly wonderful virtuosic concert piece. Do watch the online performance, where the arranger is also the violist in the quartet.

Website: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzUtbh0T0OY

Stringendo (Australian Strings Association’s magazine) - October, 2022