MICHAEL DERVANreviews Wu Man, Kronos Quartet at An Táin Theatre, Dundalk

Terry Riley – The Cusp of Magic.

Tan Dun – Ghost Opera.

The world of the string quartet is often regarded as a rarefied place. The quartet is a medium which, for a long time now, has been intimidating for a lot of composers. Brahms is not the only person to have felt the giant shadow of Beethoven. And string quartets seem to be particularly burdened with high expectations, including those of elevated discourse, and personal expression of an unusually private nature. It's not for nothing that when Janacek wrote a piece called Intimate Letters, it was a string quartet.

The members of the US’s Kronos Quartet have spent more than three decades butting their collective heads against the barriers and boundaries of quartet writing. They’re not the only new music string quartet to be that way inclined. Britain’s Arditti Quartet inhabits the European high ground, and has a wider repertoire and far more voracious appetite for premieres than Kronos. But the Ardittis have never sought to emulate Kronos’s pop-starry, populist niche. And, for many people, the cutting edge in string quartets is located wherever Kronos happen to be venturing.

Monday’s Kronos concert, promoted in Dundalk by the Louth Contemporary Music Society, consisted of the Irish premieres of two works written for the group, each of which teamed them up with pipa player Wu Man – the pipa is a form of Chinese lute that is held vertically, with a sound that’s lighter and hollower in tone than a European lute.

Both Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic (2004) and Tan Dun's Ghost Opera(1994) stretch the world of the string quartet in ways that go well beyond the addition of a pipa.

The opening movement of The Cusp of Magichas the first violinist playing rattle and kick-drum, and features a background haze of faux-string synthesiser. Later movements involve musical toys, singing, and the work employs non-Western rhythmic techniques. It was a commission for the composer's 70th birthday, and ranges widely over his personal interests. It's a delectably finished piece, that flits over its various concerns in an ear candy-ish way.

Tan Dun's Ghost Operais, as the title suggests, a much more theatrical piece. The title is a reference to a tradition that's thousands of years old. "The performer of 'ghost opera'," explains the composer, "has a dialogue with his past and future life – a dialogue between past and future, spirit and nature." The piece, "for string quartet and pipa with water, stone, paper and metal," is staged, with water bowls lit from below (used for percussive splashing and the sound-transforming immersion of gongs played with bows), and a stage-high, backlit drape used for shadow play.

It’s an absorbing theatrical presentation that’s distinctly Chinese in flavour. Dun knows how to live in the moment, whether summoning a past haunted by Bach and Shakespeare, or casting spells that are altogether more generalised in their effect. And Man and the Kronos know exactly how to deliver it.