My new String Quartet is being premiered by the Arditti Quartet this Tuesday 29 May, in a special concert at London’s newly reopened Purcell Room in memory of Leo Hepner. Written in five movements, it features unusual tunings for half the instruments – the 2nd violin has all its strings tuned down a semitone, the viola has its strings tuned down a tone.

Leo was a German chemical engineer/biotechnologist and amateur violist. He formed the Hepner Foundation to support contemporary music in the UK and Europe, and together with his wife Regina Hepner-Neupert set up a summer academy in Switzerland where composers would work with the Arditti Quartet. They supported a huge number of composers, ensembles and festivals, and in 2012 helped me during my first year studying with George Benjamin in London. Having fled Nazi Germany with his parents as a child, he was awarded Germany’s Israel Jacobson Preis of the Union of Progressive Jews for his advocacy of Liberal Judaism. Leo sadly died in London in November 2015, and I was so touched to be asked by Regina to write a piece for his memorial concert.

Other new pieces written in memory of Leo come from Charlotte Bray (Mid-Oceaned) and Milica Djordjević (Pomen II), and the concert also features music by Bach (movements from the Cello Suite BWV 1009), Webern (5 Movements for String Quartet Op. 5), Wolfgang Rihm (Fetzen, Fetzen II), George Benjamin (Viola Viola) and Brian Ferneyhough (Dum Transisset I-IV).