The String Quartet

[aeolium]

Listening to a Nielsen string quartet this lunchtime, I was thinking that there is no musical form that has given me such lasting pleasure and interest as this one. Unlike the symphony, which may have reached the end of its useful life now, the string quartet is still a living musical form and still finds composers interested in writing for it. It would be very good to have a series - a successor to the current Symphony series but purely on R3 - which explored the history of the string quartet and analysed a number of quartets from the C18 to the current day: a sort of Discovering the String Quartet series, with illustrated lectures.

With even Discovering Music now reduced to concert-interval length, this sort of enterprise is pretty unlikely. But at least we could share here our own particular favourites from the genre, and perhaps particular performances (concert or broadcast) that have stood out for us and remained in the memory.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think such a series would be invaluable. As to grounds of cost, compared with The Symphony the logistics are surely more favourable too in these straitened times.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... there is no musical form that has given me such lasting pleasure and interest as this one.

Unlike the symphony, which may have reached the end of its useful life now, the string quartet is still a living musical form and still finds composers interested in writing for it.

But at least we could share here our own particular favourites from the genre, and perhaps particular performances (concert or broadcast) that have stood out for us and remained in the memory.

Well, to start the ball rolling, I'm still reeling in the afterglow of the Ardittis' Xenakis survey last week: one of those concerts that just hold every aspect of your attention and shift your whole attitude towards a repertoire and perhaps even to Music itself. I had great admiration for these pieces before the concert, but the awe in which I now hold them is entirely different.

So many others, too: but I'm still in the gravitational pull of these performances!

(There, Mr Pee: pretentiousness a-plenty - do your damnedest! )

Best Wishes.

[Barbirollians]

I find the string quartet really a rather difficult form to love . Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven yes but I have found later works often tiring on the ear, Brahms rather unremitting for example , Shostakovich sometimes just too noisy , Bartok too rebarbative .

The form I love the most in chamber music is a string instrument accompanied by piano - Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev violin , Beethoven cello sonatas , Brahms viola sonatas etc .

[PatrickOD]

I second aeolium's suggestion. But I fear that there is so much to understand in the quartets of Haydn an Mozart that it would be years before I got to ferneys stage of appreciation. Having said that I too have a wide selection of string quartets because I love the form, even though not really understanding why in many cases.

I don't play a string instrument.

[Serial_Apologist]

I find the string quartet really a rather difficult form to love . Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven yes but I have found later works often tiring on the ear, Brahms rather unremitting for example , Shostakovich sometimes just too noisy , Bartok too rebarbative .

The form I love the most in chamber music is a string instrument accompanied by piano - Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev violin , Beethoven cello sonatas , Brahms viola sonatas etc .

You may, however, agree Barbirollians, that the string quartet has attained an undoubted ascendancy in the pantheon of chamber music history. Since Beethoven, composers who have turned to it have nearly always felt required to measure their contribution against those of the past that many have to come to agree as being masterpieces.

[jayne lee wilson]

The first to come to mind are Schoenberg's, especially for me No.1, with its teemingly inventive 4-in-1 architecture (the sort of structure you almost, but never quite, manage to follow...) a most beautiful slow movement (romantic but new, as Transfigured Night was) and that gorgeous, post-Brahmsian sunset ending.
No.2 scarcely less memorable, the emotional and musical lift-off into "the air from other planets". I remember Hans Keller's series of R3 lectures about them too, late 70s was it? How enriching it all was - I'll have to get those pieces out again. Never quite came to terms with 3 & 4, but always liked the 1st movement of 3, spinning lightly & airily along! Always wanted it played a little slower than most manage though - the New Vienna Quartet are just about right (it's playing now...inspiring!)

I could write REAMS about this thread, but have a meal to make so... a few other less obvious faves - Bartok, especially 5 with those two otherworldly slow movements, and the tragic/sardonic, viola-led 6th..., Shostakovich, especially the lighter touch in 3 & 6...

"These you have loved" (and not played for far too long)... Skalkottas 3 & 4 (HK influence again), Mendelssohn Op. 80 (a towering tragic masterpiece)... Schumann 41/3...

Pristine have a lovely download of Boccherini's Op. 53, 58 and Op. 2 sets (c/w Mendelssohn Op. 12 & 44/3), go and take a listen - real music for pleasure!

Think that's enough for now - I'm not the only one here who's starving! Back later...

[Serial_Apologist]

The first to come to mind are Schoenberg's, especially for me No.1, with its teemingly inventive 4-in-1 architecture (the sort of structure you almost, but never quite, manage to follow...) a most beautiful slow movement (romantic but new, as Transfigured Night was) and that gorgeous, post-Brahmsian sunset ending.
No.2 scarcely less memorable, the emotional and musical lift-off into "the air from other planets". I remember Hans Keller's series of R3 lectures about them too, late 70s was it? How enriching it all was - I'll have to get those pieces out again. Never quite came to terms with 3 & 4, but always liked the 1st movement of 3, spinning lightly & airily along! Always wanted it played a little slower than most manage though - the New Vienna Quartet are just about right (it's playing now...inspiring!)

I could write REAMS about this thread, but have a meal to make so... a few other less obvious faves - Bartok, especially 5 with those two otherworldly slow movements, and the tragic/sardonic, viola-led 6th..., Shostakovich, especially the lighter touch in 3 & 6...

"These you have loved" (and not played for far too long)... Skalkottas 3 & 4 (HK influence again), Mendelssohn Op. 80 (a towering tragic masterpiece)... Schumann 41/3...

Pristine have a lovely download of Boccherini's Op. 53, 58 and Op. 2 sets (c/w Mendelssohn Op. 12 & 44/3), go and take a listen - real music for pleasure!

Think that's enough for now - I'm not the only one here who's starving! Back later...

Oh how I agree!... but DO please have another go or three at the Schoenbergs 3 and 4 - 3 so full of the one thing Schoenberg is accused of lacking, humour, 4 directly in the lineage of the last Beethovens. Ardittis recommended, as always - then onto the late String Trio - amazing music. If ever I get to meet Alexander Goehr I want to tell him I think of HIS second string quarttet of 1967 as being Schoenberg's fifth. I was impressed by Ferneyhough's fifth in a broadcast about a year ago, but Jonathan Harvey's nos 3 and 4 will do nicely, if the nice burglar wouldn't mind not taking them!

S-A

[EdgeleyRob]

................. Mendelssohn Op. 80 (a towering tragic masterpiece)...Mendelssohn Op. 12 & 44/3)

Jayne-
I find myself turning more and more to chamber music.The Mendelssohn quartets (indeed his chamber music in general) are a wonderful gift to us.
I would add to your suggestions the many marvellous British quartets - Britten, Elgar,RVW,Rubbra,Stanford,Bliss etc etc.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I definitely think there is still life in the symphony, the trouble is there aren't many current composers willing or simply good enough to successfully tackle the form. The String Quartet is probably one of the most demanding of all musical challenges for a composer, it is a very hard medium to successfully master and a composer can really lay his/her emotions and technique on the line. I know how tough a challenge the medium is having now composed two quartets myself, but is also a very satisfying medium for a composer too. Many fine examples have been mentioned so far and if I can add the Piston and especially Diamond Quartets to the list (his 3rd is a masterpiece) IMO, the Tippett, Holmboe and Martinu Quartets (the 5th especially) and the Taneyev and Glazunov quartets. I think other most taxing of chamber music mediums is the Piano Quintet.

[Barbirollians]

You may, however, agree Barbirollians, that the string quartet has attained an undoubted ascendancy in the pantheon of chamber music history. Since Beethoven, composers who have turned to it have nearly always felt required to measure their contribution against those of the past that many have to come to agree as being masterpieces.

I agree entirely. It is the peak of chamber music but not always the easiest to listen to .

[jayne lee wilson]

Knew I'd forget a good one - White Man Sleeps, the 1st Quartet by Kevin Volans from 1982. In 5 marvellous movements, moving and memorable, very fresh rhythmic patterning and tone-colours; Volans said "it was a bit like introducing an African computer virus into contemporary Western music"!

Think I prefer the Duke Quartet to the Kronos, albeit marginally. If you don't know it, change that now!

[rauschwerk]

The first string quartets I got to know really well were Bartok's. I heard a couple in concert then bought the Fine Arts recordings on Saga for 37/6d (not each - for the lot!) on my student budget. Later I got hold of the scores and listened to all of these pieces almost obsessively for a time. I wish I had more opportunities to hear these great pieces in concert: my local chamber music society committee evidently considers them dangerously modernistic.

Having got to know the Beethoven quartets reasonably well (some better than others) I attended a weekend course at Madingley Hall run by the Cambridge Uni Dept of Continuing Education and devoted to the late Beethoven quartets. It was a very special experience to immerse myself in this music for 48 hours and to read the treatises by Sullivan and Kerman. After that I decided that my favourites among these late works were Opp 127 & 135 and that I didn't like the Grosse Fuge at all.

I attended a good many Haydn performances in Sheffield by the Lindsays. There were some terrific concerts when Peter Cropper was on form. Particularly engraved in my memory are Op 74/1 and Op 76/5 (the latter from their very last concert). Another favourite is Op 54/2. My plan is to study Op 50 in depth with the aid of the Cambridge Music Guide by Sutcliffe and the Henle scores which use the autographs of Nos 3-6. These turned up in Melbourne as recently as 1982.

Hummel wrote three fine string quartets in 1804 with a good few individual touches. I recommend particularly the first.

As for the 20th century, I think the quartets of Frank Bridge are worth anybody's attention - I go for the third and fourth especially. I have recordings of the first two of Peter Maxwell Davies's Naxos quartets and would like to get to know them better. It's a shame that the scores are so expensive - about three times the price of each CD. The composer is clearly trying to be helpful in his notes, but when I read, "...the ultimate C minor chord functions clearly, I hope, as an F minor dominant, within the discipline of a most perfect pandiagonal magic square." I am afraid that my brain hurts.

[Serial_Apologist]

As for the 20th century, I think the quartets of Frank Bridge are worth anybody's attention - I go for the third and fourth especially.

[aeolium]

Actually you could have a series just on Haydn's quartets, which are a whole musical world in themselves. I still remember an illustrated lecture given by Hans Keller at the Bath Festival on the op 76 quartets, and especially the key changes in the op 76 no 5 slow movement.

You could also have a series on composers' last thoughts (or in some cases, only thoughts) in the medium. There are some superb last quartets: Haydn's last (completed) one in F major, Beethoven op 135 (or any of the late quartets), Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak's A-flat op 105, Webern, Bartok, Britten. I don't find Mozart's last quartet as compelling as the 'Haydn' quartets or the 'Hoffmeister' - I think Mozart was more interested in the string quintet and chamber music for wind and strings in his last year or so.

For particular recordings, the Lasalle Quartet's recordings of the Schoenberg, Berg and Webern quartets are excellent and available amazingly cheaply from various suppliers (around £7-£8 for a 4 CD set).