The roll-call of the
Griller Quartet in British music is
long and distinguished; not to mention
catholic. Many will know them from their
all but complete cycle of the Bloch
quartets (on Decca). In addition they
participated in the first recording
of Bax’s Nonet alongside Goossens, Thurston
and Korchinska. Bax’s Third Quartet
was dedicated to and premiered by them
in 1937 and the year before that they
participated in the premiere of Rubbra’s
Spenser song-cycle Amoretti.
Bliss’s String Quartet No. 2 was written
as a tribute to them on their twentieth
anniversary. Howard Ferguson’s Octet
was recorded by them with Dennis Brain
and others. They premiered Rawsthorne’s
Second Quartet in 1954 at the Wigmore
Hall. Reginald Kell premiered William
Wordsworth Clarinet Quintet with them
in 1952.
The present collection
will be a must-buy among the many admirers
of British music. Its documentary value
is incontrovertible. Dutton offer all
three prize-winning works from the Daily
Telegraph 1933 Chamber Music competition.
Anyone see any national newspaper doing
anything similar now? The works were
recorded as part of the prize on Decca
10-inch 78s.
The Bax quartet is
his first numbered work in the genre.
Several un-numbered ones pre-date it.
The First Quartet comes up fresh as
paint in the hands of Decca, the Grillers
and Dutton. It’s a cheery life-enhancing
work in its outer movements with a decidedly
Dvořákian
bucolic character and with a buzzing
and whirling Gopak-style finale. It
yet finds time and repose for one of
those blessedly long-limbed melodies
for which Bax should be famous. He pulls
of a similar glorious piece of touching
invention in the Piano Quintet.
There is an earlier recording from the
Marie Wilson Quartet on National Gramophone
Society 78s but this has never been
issued on CD (or LP for that matter).
While I had known the
Griller-Bax 1 for years due to the kindness
of a friend who had copied the recording
onto cassette the Armstrong Gibbs and
Maconchy were new to me.
The Armstrong Gibbs,
we are told by Lewis Foreman who provides
the superb accompanying notes, is one
of seven such quartets. It is more tense
than the Bax with emotional ambivalence
playing across the three movements in
much the same haunted haunting manner
as is found in the 1920s chamber music
of Herbert Howells and in the ensemble
writing in Warlock’s The Curlew.
The fugal-style of the final few minutes
seems to me at odds with the elusive
subtlety of the rest of the work.
In Maconchy’s atmospheric
oboe quintet the soloist is a young
Helen Gaskell. This is the same Helen
Gaskell who took the cor anglais part
in the 1949 BBC premiere of Bax’s Concertante
(cor anglais, clarinet, French horn)
with Sargent conducting. Like the Armstrong
Gibbs the quintet is by no means a simple
work and its moods shift and colour
with the passing moment. It has a propensity
for melancholic reflection which takes
it close to Warlock’s Curlew again.
This is shaken off to some degree in
the gracious strolling song of the finale.
Its folk-songfulness, recalling her
teacher Vaughan Williams, is a subdued
rather than unclouded thing. Clearly
these were uncertain times.
Edric Cundell carried
off the first prize of £100 with this
four movement quartet. He is now completely
unknown so an introduction may help
set the scene.
Cundell was born in
London on 29 January 1893. His grandmother
had been an opera singer in Paris and
both his parents were musical. He went
to Haberdashers Aske’s School and then
studied horn with Adolf Borsdorf of
the LSO. He was amongst the orchestra
in that capacity for the Covent Garden
opera season in 1912 when Nikisch conducted
the Ring Cycle. He obtained a piano
scholarship to the Trinity College of
Music where apart from his time with
Borsdorf he also had piano lessons from
Henry Bird.
During the Great War
he served with a commission in the RASC.
He went to Salonika and was attached
with his unit to the Serbian Army. For
his distinguished conduct in one particular
engagement he was awarded the Serbian
Order of the White Eagle.
He was on the teaching
staff at Trinity College from 1920 as
well as undertaking some private tuition.
At the same time he was conductor of
the Westminster Orchestral Society,
the same year (1920) that he married
the sculptress Helena Harding Scott
with whom he had two children. He gained
the Hammond Endowment Grant (£200) for
composition. In 1924 he was appointed
Director of the Stock Exchange Orchestra.
1925 was the year he went on an extensive
examination tour of the USA and New
Zealand. Towards the end of the 1920s
he went on a similar tour of South Africa
conducting the Cape Town Orchestra in
his tone poem Serbia and the
Symphony.
Cundell founded his
own chamber orchestra. He joined the
music staff of Glyndebourne in 1937.
When Landon Ronald stepped down as Principal
of Trinity College Cundell succeeded
him. He was closely associated with
the Royal Philharmonic Society throughout
the Second World War. During the conflict
he occasionally conducted the BBCSO
as well as other national (particularly
the LPO) and regional orchestras.
In 1946 he conducted
the National Symphony Orchestra in the
film The Magic Bow, a life of
Paganini in which Yehudi Menuhin was
heard in the Beethoven Concerto and
various of Paganini’s own works. He
became a C.B.E. in 1949. Cundell was
Chairman of the Festival of Britain
Music Panel (1951).
He made a special study
of Mozart’s operas and conducted some
notable performances including one in
1939 with the GSM students. In 1952
he led a fine performance of Verdi’s
Falstaff. He retired from his
music appointments in 1959. His family
home was at 3 Acacia Gardens, London
NW8. He was a keen artist with a ready
talent for sketching and water colours.
Very much a London figure he died there
on 19 March 1961.
His output includes
the following works for orchestra: Suite
for strings; Symphonic Poem Serbia
(1919, written during his war service
and dedicated to King Alexander of Serbia,
Bournemouth April 1920, Proms 1920 conducted
by the composer); Poem, The Tragedy
of Deirdre Op. 17 (1922); Sonnet,
Our Dead for tenor and orchestra
(Prom, Gervase Elwes); Symphony in C
minor Op. 24 (1924); Serenade for strings;
two suites and a Piano Concerto;
His chamber music catalogue
extends amongst others to the following:
Piano Quartet Op. 15 (1922); String
Quartet Op. 18 (1922); String Quartet
in C (the one recorded here); String
Quartet in G minor; Sextet for soprano,
tenor, bass, violin, viola and cello;
Rhapsody for viola and piano.
For piano solo there are: Valse Fantasque
Op. 16 (1922); The Water Babies
parts 1 and 2 (for the young). The
choral works include Hymn to Providence
for chorus and orchestra and a Mass
(latin text, unaccompanied). There are
numerous songs.
Cundell conducted the
premiere of Malcolm Arnold’s Toy
Symphony at the Savoy Hotel in 1957.
He also directed the first performance
of Bax’s Fantasies on Polish Christmas
Carols in 1945. Benjamin Frankel
dedicated his Youth Music to
Cundell. Cundell also conducted the
premiere of Elizabeth Maconchy’s Bassoon
Concertino when the bassoonist was Gwydion
Brooke.
Cundell’s four movement
quartet op. 27 is unflaggingly energetic
to the point where it might be regarded
as almost too busy. As relief we get
a not unclouded fleetingly outlined
melody amid the scathing Warlockian
activity. This is developed further
in the warmly cocooned Adagio which
rises to moments of surprisingly Zemlinskian
complexity. The spiky little Presto
reminded me of Frank Bridge and even
Britten.
The illuminating notes
which conjure up the days in which these
recordings were first released are by
the reliable and uniquely knowledgeable
Lewis Foreman.
Three string quartets
and an oboe quintet. Apart from the
Bax none of these could be described
as music of forthright lyricism but
the sense of change and chill is strong
in the three 1932 works.
Rob Barnett
Griller Quartet with Helen Gaskell (oboe) 
