(SW 1013) (SW1014)
In his string quartet, composed in 1997, with the somewhat cryptic title "Sisifo", the composer plays on the ancient Sysiphos legend of a work which always begins from the beginning and therefore never ends.
Without using a physical program in the proper sense, such as Smetana or Janacek, Ridil bases this principle, always anew, as a composer-like idea, by cleverly delineating it through various musical parameters, but not in the consistently strict diction of serial composing, but in a playful, associative way, for example, if the microintervallics in the third movement is used as a tribute to Alois Hába, in order to have the broadest possible range from the quarter-note step to the largest intervals, to formulate the underlying musical dramaturgy.
The main focus in the corner movements is the tone Cis, in which, of course, there is also a music historical reference to two major sister works, Pfitzner's Cis Minor Quartet and Beethoven's Opus 131. Thus it seems to be the existential “Muss es sein? – Es muss sein!” in Beethoven's late quartets at least indirectly related to the Sysiphus legend.
Technically mature, formally classical, musically sophisticated, Ridil's "Sisifo" is an original, intelligent and associative processing of the material, very fresh and modern and, above all, important example for the genre of string quartet.