Kevin Volans is probably most famous for the 1984 Kronos reworking of White Man Sleeps. His beginnings in South Africa to the Neue Einfacheit (in English, New Simplicity) of West Germany with the theorist Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose seminal sine-waves and soundscapes shaped the landscape we understand in electronic music today, are well-documented. The Man With Footsoles of Wind, an opera about the enterprise of the influential poet Arthur Rimbaud in Ethiopia, remains very much on my ‘listening wishlist’. Volans is obviously a musicologist. He is undoubtedly a modernist. This is 2022. He has offered us Études, a collection of his own previously unreleased solo piano works performed by Jill Richards and a second-half where he performs Liszt. The listener has been invited into “a sound world” with “extremely complex and challenging arrangements”.

During the rehearsals for the string quartet version of "White Man Sleeps," a strong artistic bond developed between the work's performers, the renowned Kronos Quartet, and its composer, Kevin Volans. This led Kronos to commission a second-string quartet from Volans, especially written for the musicians. Like "White Man Sleeps," it is a stunning piece of music, recommended to every world music lover who wants to cross the bridge to contemporary, modern music. The work comes in three movements, each one with a different character. Most remarkably are the Ethiopian influences in the beginning bars of the first movement (compare this motive with the vocal style of the distinguished Ethiopian singer Aster Aweke) and the joyous Southern African dance-like motive featuring after the more contemplative opening of the second movement. The slightly melancholic song-like structure of the short third movement draws the work to a close.