Juan Crisóstomo de ARRIAGA (1806-1826)
String Quartet No. 1 in D minor (pub. 1824) [26:05]
String Quartet No. 2 in A major (pub. 1824) [20:45]
String Quartet No. 3 in E flat major (pub. 1824) [22:35]
Aeolian Quartet
rec. December 1954, BBC Studio broadcasts
CAMEO CLASSICS CC9117 [69:55]
Richard Itter’s collection of broadcast recordings continues to push in new directions. Released on Cameo Classics under license from Lyrita this latest example of Itter’s perspicacious selection focuses on Arriaga’s String Quartets in performances by the Aeolian String Quartet. The group’s origins lay in the Stratton Quartet, named after its first violinist George Stratton. The latter group’s famous recordings of Elgar’s chamber works had been played to the dying composer and Stratton continued in post for two decades, at which point the group was renamed the Aeolian. At the time of these 1954 BBC broadcasts the line-up was Sidney Humphreys – one of many brilliant Canadian violinists active in Britain - Trevor Williams, Watson Forbes – who had joined in 1932 – and the only surviving founding member, cellist John Moore. Their greatest recorded legacy remains the set of all Haydn String Quartets, though this came a number of years later when Emanuel Hurwitz was first violinist.
Arriaga was in the ether at the time of these BBC broadcasts. I checked the Radio Times archive and noticed a broadcast of the Guilet Quartet’s commercial recording of Quartet No.2, which was on the air the previous year. Scherchen, no less, directed the BBC Symphony in the Symphony in D in December 1953. Maybe these instances gave impetus to broadcasts of all three quartets over three days in December 1954, the cycle being prefaced the previous week by an illustrated talk on the Third Programme by Watson Forbes.
For the ultra-Classical D minor the Aeolian play up its Mozartian inheritance – elegant in the Allegro and warmly expressive in the Adagio where they find real pathos, not least in the primus inter pares role for Humphreys where the canny diminuendi pay off. The most original movement in the D minor is the Menuetto, where strong traces of Arriaga’s youthful whimsicality can be felt and where the pleasures of a genteel dance can too. Moore’s cello drone gives life to the energetic finale. All four players had strong though not outsize musical personalities, never overbalancing ensemble and this serves the more Haydn-leaning A major especially well. Rhythms are well sprung and there’s real beauty in the aria-like Andante, a songful series of variations, well characterised and contrasted by the foursome. Vivacity and lithe interplay mark out the remainder of the quartet. The E flat major is, in many ways, the most impressive. Its structure is conventional enough but there are plenty of effects and influences that bring it winningly to life, not least a two-violin folk section with drone cello, dramatic tremolandi in the central pages of the Pastorale – reminiscent of an ocean storm, not least in this strong, masculine reading – and the eager gracefulness of the finale, despite a Presto agitato indication that may suggest greater velocity. All in all the Aeolian prove sturdy, admirable guides to the repertoire.
The mono recording is excellent, though the final broadcast, on 9 December with the E flat major, sounds just marginally less forward. Itter’s recording equipment, as is well known, was top class and the acetates have been excellently transferred by Norman White and Adrian Tuttenham, with Adrian Farmer’s notes setting the seal on a perhaps unexpected but nevertheless very welcome restoration.
Jonathan Woolf
