There is hope for contemporary
music yet. Naxos has embarked on its
most laudable enterprise to date, the
commissioning and recording of a series
of string quartets by that ex-enfant
terrible, Peter Maxwell Davies. Moreover,
the chosen ensemble is the youthful,
expert Maggini Quartet, which has already
established its credentials in a series
of recordings for Naxos (including Bridge,
Bax, Moeran, Bliss and Vaughan Williams).
Maxwell Davies brings with him tougher
terrain, though. It is a pleasure to
report that this disc is almost beyond
criticism.
Great also that the
author of the booklet notes is none
other that Maxwell Davies himself, letting
us into his world and offering eminently
followable listening guides. Further
information about the composer can be
found on his superb website, MaxOpus
(http://.www.maxopus.com).
The first Naxos Quartet
dates from 2002. Dedicated to Maxwell
Davies’ manager of 27 years, Judy Arnold,
it was premièred by the Maggini
Quartet at the Wigmore Hall in October
2002. No surprise, perhaps, that the
figure of Haydn is there in the background,
especially in the sonata-form machinations
of the first movement: Allegro, complete
with Adagio introduction. Maxwell Davies
links the very opening with the parallel
point in Beethoven’s F sharp major piano
sonata - too much of a stretch for my
imagination). The ghostly introduction
gives way to a rigorous, angular exposition
that clearly means business. The Maggini
Quartet captures the flighty aspect
of this music beautifully and just listen
to the fragmentary chordal passage around
six minutes in, how marvellously it
is balanced, how in tune … There is
a real lyrical undercurrent detectable
here.
The Largo begins as
a Passacaglia, interrupted by a tremolo
solo cello. Maxwell Davies presents
the listener with two ‘types’ of music,
slow and stately (‘reminiscent of Jacobean
dance music, as if a chest of viols
were subtly present’ – Maxwell Davies)
and its violent extreme ‘other side’,
elusive, explosive and fragmentary with
large timbral contrasts. The two types
eventually effect an understanding.
After two movements
each over 13 minutes duration, the finale
is a mere two minutes long. Suggested,
‘by a strong breeze through dry heather’,
the composer himself says it is ‘too
short’, evaporating before anything
much has happened to its material. Its
primary function is to act as a veil-like
counterfoil to the long first two movements,
but it also reaches forward, to be ‘brought
back from the stratosphere’ in the Third
Quartet.
The Second Quartet,
first performed in the Pump Room, Cheltenham
in July 2003, is a fine composition.
A slow introduction defines registral
spaces to be filled in later; a D minor
cadence ‘signposts clearly the end of
the first subject group’. Audible formal
coherence is obviously important to
the composer, then. Berg used similar
procedures (most obviously in the Piano
Sonata, Op. 1), an interesting reference
as some of the more intense passages
recall Bergian expressionism without
making overt reference to the harmonic
language.
As far as any reference
to Haydnesque playfulness goes, this
is the play of a child that can easily
become petulant and impatient.
The slow movement (Lento
flessibile) begins with a lovely, beautifully
recorded sniff (presumably from the
first violinist). Here Bergian expressionism
is at its height (listen out also for
the wonderful feeling of stasis at around
4’24). The intense dotted rhythms of
the short (4’45) Allegro third movement
pave the way for a second ‘Lento flessible’.
Balancing the first movement in length,
this shows Maxwell Davies as a master
of his craft. Textures are shifting,
but beautifully rather than restfully
so. It is like listening to a slowly
breathing organism, and the control
the Maggini Quartet summons up in creating
this image is remarkable. I remain somewhat
dissatisfied by the very end, a crescendo
of intensity as well as of volume, on
a unison, the effect of which is almost
dismissive of the listener.
But this is a superb,
vitally important disc. Naxos is to
be congratulated on their foresight
in aiding the creation of a cycle of
quartets that promises so much. The
world premiere of Naxos Quartet No.
5 (and the London premiere of No. 4)
will take place at the Wigmore Hall,
London on Wednesday, 20 October 2004.
Colin Clarke
Maggini Quartet (Laurence Jackson, David Angel,
violins; Martin Outram, viola; Michal Kaznowski,
cello). 