The première of Charlotte Bray’s “That which you wove of lightest thread, I wear to honour stone”, (RTF072) for French Horn and String Quartet commissioned by the Festival with the support of the Foundation, was performed by hornist Ben Goldscheider, violinists Benjamin Baker and Alessandro Ruisi, violist Sascha Bota and cellist Jamie Walton. The performance was accompanied a haunting visual installation of skeleton leaves by artist Caroline Burraway.
“The piece takes its title from poetry by Paul Celan that contrasts the delicacy of a woven shroud with the weight of history and the dead. Emerging out of silence, Bray’s broadly meditative and gently consoling single-movement piece created and inhabited a delicately poised soundscape featuring hushed, seemingly half-remembered, repeated figures, including several horn calls, before disappearing back into the stillness from which it appeared. Bray’s previous collaboration with Caroline Burraway resulted in the powerfully moving and variegated string quartet Ungrievable Lives of 2022. These two creative artists’ latest joint project, That which you wove of lightest thread, I wear to honour stone, was more reflective, though no less affecting and directly communicative. In a superbly committed first performance, the players were alert to the sparingly scored music’s subtle dynamic shading and responded poetically to the delicate interplay between the five instruments, ensuring that every gesture and shift in tempo counted.” Paul Conway, Seen and Heard International, 15 August 2026