Chandos’s
devotion to McEwen’s music continues in its exploratory way with
the second volume of the String Quartets. It was Joseph Holbrooke
who said of McEwen in 1925 "his heart was in chamber music…and
there are, I believe, eight splendid quartets for strings."
McEwen lived to write many more of course and the implication
behind Holbrooke’s comment – that they weren’t played – was not
entirely true even then. One of my few complaints about this production
is that these are claimed authoritatively to be premiere recordings.
Well, yes and no. Two movements of possibly McEwen’s most popular
Quartet, No 6 Biscay, were recorded by the dedicatees and
first performers, the London String Quartet, as long ago as 1916,
the year after the premiere. Very slightly abridged, Columbia
L1116 shows the commitment to contemporary British chamber works
demonstrated by some recording companies at the time.
Given
that most will be unfamiliar with that elderly disc, these are
effectively three new quartets to digest. Sensibly Chandos gives
us an early, a middle and a middle-late work (in the first
volume we had No. 4 of 1905, No. 7 written in 1916 and No.
16 dating from 1936, and the late Fantasia). The Third Quartet
(1901) is in three movements and establishes an intriguing, though
not as yet wholly individualised, approach to the medium. The
opening movement carries the main weight of the argument; an auburn
and chromatic opening adagio leading to a quasi-fugal section
is accompanied by some noble and alert writing. There’s a confident
dancing vitality to the Allegro section, which manages to take
in broadenings of tempo and elasticities of subject matter. The
root is Haydn; the execution that of a composer alert to contemporary
European developments though hardly in the avant-garde. The material
reflects upon itself as it winds down and the cello has a noteworthy
melody, elegiac and elevated, before McEwen summons up the slowing
movement into an ending of pleasurable animation. The Allegretto
second movement is slighter in conception with a March profile
animated by what Levon Chilingirian calls in his notes a "burlesque
character." Oddly, parts of it put me in mind of Elgar’s
1900-01 Cockaigne. The Presto finale has a dash of his native
Scottish muse, folksy (but not too folksy) and lyrical with an
affectionate drive and very well aerated.
Written
in 1913 the Biscay Quartet wasn’t published until 1916.
In the interim the London Quartet had given its premiere and they
were to prove strong supporters of McEwen, as was their first
violinist, Albert Sammons, who later performed a number of the
Violin Sonatas throughout the 1920s. This is a delightful work,
again in three (named) movements, colourful, rhythmically animated,
saturated in nature and idiomatically written. It was composed
when McEwen was living on Cap Ferret in the South of France. The
first movement, Le Phare (The Lighthouse) certainly announces
his impressionistic affiliations; there’s an agitated opening,
shimmering episodes and a virtuosic part for the first violin;
the contrasting sections have a sturdy sobriety to them that lowers
the temperature effectively. In fact there’s tremolando freshness
to much of this movement, with enough incipient tension to keep
the musical argument and structure tight and effective. The second
movement is called Les Dunes and it’s deeply expressive
in its impressionistic wash. The viola takes centre stage in its
evocative solo with accompanying drone bass – played here by Asdis
Valdimarsdottir with plangent depth – before the first violin
takes up the honours; don’t overlook the ingenious accompaniment
to the fiddle here. McEwen summons up limitless horizons and vistas
of immense stillness. In Cobbett’s Cyclopaedic Survey of Chamber
Music Spencer Dyke – another one of McEwen’s leading exponents
whose eponymous Quartet also recorded his music in the 1920s –
remarks that La Racleuse, the title of the last movement,
recalls the free and happy life of the oyster-gatherers on the
oyster beds. Levon Chilingirian writes in the booklet that racler
means to scrape and there’s certainly a folksy old melody for
the first violin. I paced up and down for a while wondering what
it reminded me of and then I realised – William Kroll’s Banjo
and Fiddle of 1940, a full twenty five years avant la lettre.
The rhythm is excellent and the Chilingirians have a real cocksure,
ebullient swagger – and do well in the contrasting Allegretto
section as well. McEwen draws on more tremolando writing here
as well as some spirited Dvořákian influenced freedom as
he drives towards the charming, throwaway ending. Even I have
to admit it, the Chilingirians really do bring life and joyous
affirmation to this movement that rather puts in the shade the
London Quartet’s more approximate effort.
Finally
to the 1928 Thirteenth. In four conventional sounding movements
this has a concentrated assurance and depth that announce it immediately
as a powerful work. There is a sense of insecurity and complex
working out in the opening moderato that is only resolved by the
increasing confidence and, indeed, effulgence of the writing,
which, at the movement’s climax, has become positively serene.
A scherzo follows that is rather vocal in impress, quite light,
with plentiful ostinati and strong dance rhythms. The slow movement
is expressive and the cello recitatives add their own burden to
the movement, as does the viola solo. The tremolando effects generate
a sense of expectation and flux, one that successfully resolves
by the end of the movement. A bustling, galvanizing finale presents
us with perky little tunes and a slither of impressionistic gauze
as well; veil-like moments full of chromatic suggestion. McEwen
plays with our expectations as to exactly where the weight and
emotive tension will fall – and manages to confound them as well
– and he slows down to an affirmatory but quietly introspective
conclusion.
Sound
quality at Snape Maltings is first class; generosity of acoustic
without over burnished bloom or spread. Levon Chilingirian’s notes
are apposite and helpful and this latest disc – as if you can’t
tell – gets a most enthusiastic welcome.
Jonathan
Woolf
Chilingirian Quartet