Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
String Quartet in E minor (1902 rev. 1912)
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
String Quartet in C minor (1888, reconstructed by Daniel M. Gimley)
Villiers Quartet (Katie Stillman and Tamaki Higashi (violins), Carmen Flores (viola), Leo Melvin (cello))
rec. 2022, Ayriel Studios, North Yorkshire, England
NAXOS 8.574376 [66]
In 2017 Naxos released a disc by the Villiers Quartet of quartets by Delius and Elgar. At the time it was known that Delius had reworked some of the material from an earlier – then lost – work into his 1916 quartet. In 2108 the score of the first two movements of this student work turned up at auction allowing musicologist and liner note writer Daniel M. Grimley to reconstruct the complete work for the world premiere recording here. For this the Villiers quartet – albeit with a different first violin and cellist – have returned to the studio coupling the work with Ethel Smyth’s substantial String Quartet in E minor.
Smyth is a fascinating figure whose fame for many years rested as much on her dynamic personality and extra-musical activities as her qualities as a composer. Most (im)famously she went to jail because of her suffragette principles. Recent times have seen a move to re-evaluate her stature as a composer with labels such as Chandos recording large-scale works and at the BBC Proms this year three of her most substantial works were performed. But using the Proms archive as a performance ‘touchstone’ does not fully support the narrative of a composer marginalised on account of her gender. Remarkably her works have featured 66 times at the Proms with excerpts from her most famous opera The Wreckers (often the overture) performed twenty six times between 1913 and her death in 1944. Her next most famous opera The Boatswain’s Mate garnered a further 16 Proms appearances (again as excerpts) during the same time. Compare that to any number of – say – Latin American composers yet to receive a Proms debut. Important too to point out that she was near-exact contemporary of the self-taught Elgar who struggled with issues of class just as career-limiting as hers of gender and was only four years older than Delius with whom she shared a wealthy middle class background and an attenuated period of study in Leipzig.
So by measure of the music alone how impressive is her only string quartet? This is a big and confident work. All four recordings – this one is the 4th – run around the forty minute mark. Certainly she has the compositional craft to create substantial structures. My problem is the same that I have encountered with all of her work that I know; she lacks the melodic memorability and emotional heft of an Elgar or the textural/structural individuality of a Delius. Now neither of those composers were exactly modernists or iconoclasts but both possessed a musical voice distinctly their own. Although Smyth does use harmony in a fairly fluid way – nothing as radical mind as many European composers circa 1910 – her musical models remain resolutely late 19th century German. There is a curious dichotomy in someone who was a radical in her social and political outlook could be musically conservative. Grimley starts his liner with the contentious comment; “There are few more path-breaking and original figures in English music than Ethel Smyth”. This might be valid if including her personality and politics but by the measure of music alone – which is after all what this disc can offer – that is patently not so.
Smyth wrote the quartet across a decade with the opening two movements dating from 1902 and closing two from 1912. What Grimley suggests as “masterful coherence and consistency” across that decade, less charitable observers might consider as a blinkered refusal to acknowledge the remarkable musical evolution that decade represented – even within the staid British musical establishment. I have not heard any of the other recordings of this quartet but I have to say the Villiers Quartet do an admirable job. Technically adept, well and lucidly balanced and with a strong sense of the sweep and scale of the work they are impressive advocates even if they cannot persuade me as to the piece’s enduring value. At 12:41 the opening Allegretto lirico simply outstays its welcome given the quality of the primary material and how Smyth develops it. In direct contrast with the Delius String Quartet in C minor it is immediately evident that although the Delius is clearly a “work in progress” the scale and proportion of the piece – 25:55 in total with the ambitious opening Allegro assai easily the longest movement at 10:18 – is much more effective. I do not say this flippantly but the best movement in the Smyth is also the shortest. This is the scherzo placed second – Allegro molto leggiero at 5:21. As a slight aside, my favourite string quartet repertoire ‘bible’ “The Well-Tempered String Quartet” revised in 1949 to include British music is more favourably disposed to the work than I. It states; “All four [movements] bear the hall-mark of real musicianship. The first is lyrical and spontaneous... the second, a highly original movement, is interesting rather than appealing, but the third atones for that by its rich-sounding effect. The last movement is a scholarly fugue”.
I still feel that the second movement lacks real musical memorability but there is a playful interchange of motifs around all the players and indeed this gives a good example of just how well the Villiers play – its very neat and articulate even when some of the writing sounds individually demanding. Also the engineering is good throughout the whole disc. The quartet is not placed too close to the microphones in a resonant acoustic which often is the preferred manner currently which often has the effect of over-inflating a quartet’s sound. The sound here is neutral in the best sense but clear and clean. Certainly the third movement Andante is “rich-sounding” as The Well-Tempered String Quartet suggests but for some reason Smyth shies away from making this emotionally rich as well. Perhaps for someone of her social background and gender-politics stance displays of emotion equated with weakness – something she would never be able to acknowledge. So I find this Andante quite impressive in terms of the actual sonorities achieved but curiously unmoving. An impression the emotionally detached fugal Allegro energico reinforces – what can be less emotional than an academic fugue? Well this movement is not really a fugue although the initial material does have certain fugal characteristics. There is a kind of hearty energy to the writing which is again well-conveyed here with the brusque ending dispatched with suitable bravura. In comparison to Standford’s cycle of Germano-centric string quartets which he was in the middle of writing at much the same time as the Smyth, the former are individually and collectively far more impressive works in every respect.
I am sure that Delius himself would not claim to be the most idiomatic composer for strings but from the opening bars of his student String Quartet in C minor I would suggest a different order of musical interest. Throughout the entire there a fleeting moments; a melodic droop, a harmonic suspension, that suggest the composer to come. Grimley describes the newly discovered first movement mentioned above – Allegro assai – as “more like an orchestral tone poem than a piece for chamber ensemble”. The way Delius builds the energy through the movement does suggest similar passages in his larger scores such as Paris and even Appalachia. Certainly the young composer makes demands on the players that in part explains why the quartet was returned from his friend and colleague Christian Sinding (a fine violinist and composer in his own right) unplayed. But even if this movement is ‘flawed’ the aspiration of the music makes for something I find substantially more engaging than any of Smyth’s aspic-set-certainties. The performance by the Villiers is again very secure and impressive – perhaps proving Sinding wrong along the way! Certainly this performance is a very good companion to the Villiers earlier Naxos/Delius recording – the direct comparison between the Allegro vivace in its original form and how Delius reworked it for the 1916/17 mature quartet is fascinating for enthusiasts of this composer. The third movement is a curious compendium of styles and emotions starting with “solemn sobriety” followed by a gently lilting barcarolle-like passage which again intimates at music yet to come before another more vigorous passage subsides allowing the movement to sink away to more chromatic musings and a richly euphonious close. All of that lasts just 5:15 – Ethel Smyth take note. I am not sure it all coheres together but it certainly maintains the listener’s interest. The finale – Agitato allegro – is again a compact 5:37 – Grimley suggests the closing bars feel; “as if the music has been overrun by a horde of mountain trolls and other malignant beings.” I suppose 1888 does represent the beginning of Delius’ fascination for Norway given his close friendship with Grieg. There is a certain stamping weighty, possibly even Nordic, feel to the closing pages but since the music actually fades to a pensive close the Trolls would seem to be quite polite ones. But what I like about this quartet very much is its questing nature – this is a kind of musical laboratory for Delius to test out ideas, nascent harmonies and textures that would define his mature music in the years ahead.
I am sure that many listeners will react quite differently and more positively to Ethel Smyth’s string quartet than I do. The fact that I find much more of interest in a student work by Delius than a fully mature work by Smyth is indicative of my sense of their relative musical stature. Both works receive fine, committed and sensitive performances and are well recorded – perhaps music to sample before purchasing.
Nick Barnard
Published: November 17, 2022
