Mátyás SEIBER (1905-1960)
String Quartets: No. 1 (1924) [15:07]; No. 2 (1934-35) [22:20]; No. 3 Quartetto
Lirico (1948-51) [22:48]
Edinburgh
Quartet (Tristan Gurney (violin 1); Philip Burrin (violin 2); Michael Beeston
(viola); Mark Bailey (cello))
rec. 18-20 May 2009, Prestonkirk Parish Church, East Linton. DDD
World premiere stereo recording of all three of Seiber's string quartets
DELPHIAN
DCD34082 [60:17] 
Here we have Seiber’s three string quartets from three consecutive
decades and in three styles though the last two have more in common with each
other. They are played by the Edinburgh Quartet with exemplary attention to
Seiber’s subtlety, singing proclivities and gutsy energy. Nor have Delphian
short-changed them. The recording is fruitily close and has vivid impact.
The Edinburgh Quartet has never been content to cruise through familiar waters.
On BBC Radio they have tackled Arnold (Second Quartet, 20 August 1982), Cedric
Thorpe Davie (Directions for A Map with soprano Marie Slorach), Frankel,
Gál, McEwen (Ninth Quartet in 1986), Rubbra (First Quartet, 1993), Ronald
Stevenson (Voces Vagabundae 1993) and Van Dieren (Sixth Quartet). On
commercial recording there’s Priaulx Rainier’s Quartet on Redcliffe review
details.
They have also made recordings for Delphian including a Thomas Wilson portrait
(DCD34079) with his String Quartet No. 3 (1958), Edward Harper (DCD34069),
Robert Crawford (DCD34055), The Cold Dancer anthology (Contemporary Quartets
by Dempster, Clapperton, Weir and Sweeney, DCD34038), Hans Gál (Complete Quartets
Meridian CDE84530 and CDE84531); Kenneth Leighton (Meridian CDE84465 CDE84460)
and various Scottish Quartets by the Earl of Kelly, Mackenzie, Wilson and
McEwen (Meridian CDE84445) List of delphian reviews here.
Mátyás Seiber was one of a generation of émigré composers who made - or were
forced to make - the UK their home in the 1930s and 1940s. His star is rising
to a modest zenith as we can see from the Seiber
website. His Ulysses cantata (1947), still unrecorded, receives
its U.S. premiere conducted by the matchless Leon Botstein in a superbly unhackneyed
programme including Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique and Schoeck’s Lebendig
Begraben at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, 6 October 2010. In 2005 Hungaroton
issued a collection of his songs and chamber music HCD 32405 and a review
of that disc will appear here soon.
His output is devoid of the standard forms apart from the quartet of which
there are three instances. His other works include: Fantasia Concertante
for violin and string orchestra (1943), Concertino for clarinet
and string orchestra (1951), Notturno for horn and string orchestra
(1944), Besardo Suite No. 2 (1942), Elegy for viola and small
orchestra (1954), Tre Pezzi for cello and orchestra (1957) and Improvisations
for Jazz Band and Orchestra (with John Dankworth) (1959). The vocal works
with orchestra include two major Joyce pieces: Ulysses: cantata for
tenor solo, choir and orchestra (1947) which was broadcast in 1972 by David
Atherton with the LSO, Goldsmiths Choral Union and the tenor Alexander Young.
It is joined by the Three Fragments from the Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man. The instrumental and chamber music includes the Divertimento
for Clarinet and string Quartet (1925), Permutazioni a Cinque for
wind quintet (1958), Violin Sonata (1960), Concert Piece for violin
and piano (1954), Serenade for six wind instruments (1925), Two
Jazzolettes for 2 saxophones, 2&2 (1929 and 1932) and the Sonata
da Camera. His list of songs includes Yugoslav Folk Songs and Hungarian
Folk Songs, the Medieval French Songs, the Lear Nonsense Songs
and The Great Tay Whale. There are several film scores as well:
Animal Farm; A Town Like Alice; The Owl and the Pussycat;
Chase a Crooked Shadow; The Magic Canvas and Robbery Under
Arms. He wrote a ballet score in 1960: The Invitation. Peter Racine
Fricker dedicated his Fourth Symphony to Seiber in 1966. Seiber’s meagre LP
discography includes the Jazz Improvisations by the late-lamented Johnny
Dankworth with his band and the LPO conducted by Hugo Rignold. This was followed
by an album coupling Searle’s Symphony No. 1 (cond. Boult) with Seiber’s Viola
Elegy (Cecil Aronowitz) and the Three Fragments where Peter Pears
was joined by the Melos and Dorian ensembles conducted by the composer (Decca
LXT 5588 and then SXL 2232).
The three quartets are far from prolix. They are serious and catch the composer
in three phases of development - none better or worse than the other. The
First Quartet carries the beneficent marks of his teacher Kodaly. Yet across
its three movements it is also wilder and more feral. Hungarian folk and dance
material is to the fore but especially in the finale it is barbarically driven
in a raw way more akin to Bartok than Kodaly. Yet overall in the balance between
Bartok and Kodaly the latter dominates. The work is very pleasing indeed and
will appeal strongly if you are a Kodaly fan. The Second Quartet is from a
decade later. It is pretty frankly dissonant and distinctly tougher going.
The Third Quartet is a work of Seiber’s high noon maturity yet here dissonance
is tempered by a chilly lyrical strain. The latter was premiered in April
1952 at London’s Contemporary Music Centre. The superb liner-notes quote letters
to Norbert Brainin confirming that Seiber had the sound of Brainin's Amadeus
Quartet in mind when he was writing the Lirico. The first recording
– the only one before this - was by the Amadeus. It can be heard alongside
Tippett on EMI Classics’ British Composer Series 7243 5 85150 2 2. This was
issued in 2003. The Amadeus recording was made in analogue mono at No. 3 Studio,
Abbey Road on 24-25 May 1954 and times out only three seconds longer than
the duration declared for the Delphian version. It was first issued in 1956
with Tippett’s Second Quartet on EMI ALP 1302.
The composer Hugh Wood wrote the notes. He was a pupil of Seiber (1958-59)
and also has five quartets to his name.
This is a significant step forward in the British music discography. More
to the point the music encompasses a range from folksy to dissonance tempered
by a chilly lyricism. The music is played with every appearance of complete
commitment.
Rob Barnett
Alan Gibbs has also listened to this recording
Two of these quartets by the Hungarian-born composer date from before he decided
to settle in the UK in 1935. But once he had arrived, like Gerhard, Wellesz
and Reizenstein he became an integral part of the British musical scene, helping
to found the Society for the Promotion of New Music, writing scores for concerts,
films, ballet – even Hoffnung festivals - teaching at Morley College and conducting
the Dorian Singers. Aware of the textbook-conservatism of the UK colleges,
he insisted that ‘the teaching of composition should be based on the actual
practice of the masters of past and present’ and, with his European background,
warned against ‘the danger of isolationism, always inherent in an island community’
(quotations from Tempo 11 of June 1945). He led by example, putting
both of these precepts into practice in his own music, and Hugh Wood, in his
masterly sleeve-notes, rightly asserts that the quartets, in themselves, form
‘a synopsis of new musical developments in the first half of the twentieth
century’. The Amadeus Quartet recorded No 3, but this new recording, issued
in the fiftieth year after Seiber’s untimely death, is the first to present
all three, fitting snugly onto one disc. The composer’s daughter Julia has
recently uncovered his correspondence shedding light on the origins and form
of Nos. 1 and 3 which Dr Wood is able to quote, and this may, if wished, be
supplemented by reference to Seiber’s analytical note on No 2 in Rufer’s Composition
with Twelve Notes.
His three quartets are all in three movements. No. 1 is a very approachable
student work, guided by Kodály and showing the inspiration of his teacher
and of Hungarian folk music. No. 2 (1934-5) is a different proposition: Bartók
at his most uncompromising (Fourth Quartet) meets Schoenberg and Berg (Lyric
Suite), not least in the Presto finale, scurrying sotto voce
with mutes and an array of other string effects, interrupted by extended explosive
and more lyrical sections. Bartókian use of small intervals as building blocks
is channelled into a note-row with seconds at beginning and end and tritones
in the middle. The central movement is a parodistic Intermezzo “alla Blues”,
reminding us that Seiber pioneered the serious study of jazz in Frankfurt
in 1928. Here it is seen through a serial prism, as in Schoenberg’s Op. 29
of 1926. Serial, yes, but not rule-bound: ‘the only thing that interests me
is whether I succeeded in writing some real music’ – and he did. The
yearning opening phrase of No. 3 (Quartetto Lirico, 1948-51), briefly
reminiscent of Berg’s Op 3, initiates a work of expressiveness and passion,
with a lighter scherzo (and fractious trio) for contrast. The pensive lento
espressivo finale leaves us with a low, insistent two-note figure in the
cello, Seiber’s own instrument, and comes to rest (like the first movement)
on a calm major triad.
This CD is very persuasive. This will not surprise anybody who observed the
total commitment of the Edinburgh Quartet (albeit with a different leader)
in the same programme at concerts in Cambridge and London in 2005. They have
risen splendidly to the many demands: folklike celebration, gritty ferocity,
haunting passion, feverish mutterings, reassuring calm, unanimous in tempi
from very slow to extremely fast, and with pauses allowing the music to breathe.
The engineers have captured a wide range of dynamic so that no note is lost
– important in such meticulously crafted music.
Alan Gibbs
see also article on Seiber by Francis Routh