The Hard Quartet

A more radiant and gratifyingly robust collection of baroque instrumental works would be hard to imagine. Dedicated to Biber’s patron, Maximilian Gandolph, in the 1676 publication, these 12 sonatas (which broadly translate as ‘sonatas suitable for altar or court’) juxtapose pieces for a rich five- or six-part string palette – pursuing an exhilarating, intensely-wrought, sophisticated and unpredictable musical rhetoric – with quasi-concerted and swaggering trumpets. The two are not mutually exclusive since Biber wrote Sonata VI for a solo trumpet in G minor, a work which stretches the capability of the ‘natural’ instrument and coaxes it into the poignant and refined world of early Italian canzonas.

An imaginative mixture of the popular and the unusual. Barber’s only quartet has at its heart the famous Adagio for Strings: the latter is an arrangement of the second of the quartet’s two movements. That Adagio – which here benefits not only from the unfamiliarity of the chamber original but also from the Duke’s sensitively understated approach on their first recording for Collins Classics – is here surrounded by some captivating faster music (including a brief return to the opening Molto allegro’s ideas). And Robert Maycock’s excellent booklet notes hint at what those famous seven minutes of slow, sad passion in particular could really be said to be about: young homosexual love in the Austrian woods. Thirty years later, in 1966, another American in Europe, and still in his twenties, wrote his first string quartet, though it’s unlikely to be a direct reflection of love, this time in Paris.

The Mandelring Quartet plays with unflinching resolve, sympathetic expression, incisive attacks, and penetrating tone, which are all necessary in Shostakovich's sardonic and frequently bitter language.

This CD reissue (put out in 1990) may be hard to find, now that Savoy has been sold to the Japanese Denon label. Originally issued under flugelhornist Wilbur Harden's name, the 1958 quartet (which also includes pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist George Duvivier and drummer Granville T. Hogan) performs nine Rodgers & Hammerstein songs mostly taken from The King and I, plus a reprise and an alternate take of "Hello Young Lovers." The interpretations are tasteful yet swinging, and include such familiar tunes as "Getting to Know You" and "We Kiss In a Shadow," along with some obscurities. Enjoyable music.

Grechaninov was born in Moscow a year before Sibelius and also died in New York a year before Sibelius. He was taught by Rimsky-Korsakov. His music did not migrate far from his roots and continued to write in that style well after the 1917 revolution had led to exile first in France and then in the USA. A prolific composer in all the usual genres, his reputation seems to rest mainly on choral music and to be rather tainted by suggestions of lack of originality. Certainly, by comparison with his near contemporary Sibelius, his style did not develop much, meaning it is rather hard to believe the fourth quartet was written as late as 1929. But, listening to this disc, I sometimes found the music hard to place and was not continually reminded of other composers, surely one sign of an original voice. There are four Grechaninov string quartets and this offering completes the Utrecht Quartet’s cycle. The previous disc was well-received by Michael Cookson three years ago (see review). Both works are in four movements with the slow movement placed second. They are fairly conventional but well-crafted and pleasant listening.