Walton’s Piano Quartet is a work of the composer’s
precocious youth, written when he was only sixteen years of
age. It was given a hammering in print by Ernest Newman in the
Sunday Times when he was reviewing (favourably) the
first public performance of Façade: “All I knew of
this young man’s music before Tuesday was a horrible quartet
of his that was given at the Royal College of Music three or
four years ago. On the strength of this, I take leave to dislike
intensely Mr Walton’s serious music – if, indeed, that quartet
was serious and was music, both of which I
doubt.” But Walton was an inveterate reviser of his own work
– Façade, Belshazzar’s Feast, the Viola
Concerto, the march Crown Imperial, the Sinfonia
concertante - all underwent this process – and he went
back to this quartet too in the last years of his life, making
alterations to the score.
Walton’s amendments were sometimes ill-considered – one thinks
of the opening of Cressida’s aria in Troilus and Cressida,
which still begins in the revised score with a reminiscence
of the preceding chorus which Walton had excised in 1962 – but
usually they were improvements. The booklet note gives no hint
whatsoever that the work was ever retouched by the composer
after it was first published in 1924. It is not clear whether
this performance gives us Walton’s original thoughts or his
later reconsiderations; comparison with the recording by the
Nash Ensemble (using the revised version) on Chandos would seem
to imply that what we have here are not Walton’s first teenage
thoughts. Be that as it may, there is nothing here which would
seem to warrant Newman’s vituperation. Perhaps he just heard
a bad performance by (presumably) student players. These players
are most certainly not students, and their performance is most
certainly not bad. Their attack in the scherzo is superbly rhythmic;
their playing in the tranquil slow movement delectable; and
their assault on the vigorous finale passionate and heartfelt.
This last movement is a superbly feisty bit of writing, with
a sense of headlong drive which anticipates Belshazzar’s
Feast, and the players enjoy every minute of it, rampaging
fearlessly through some ferociously difficult passages.
Like the Walton, if not quite so precocious, the work by Bridge
is also an early one; but ‘early’ in the case of Bridge means
relatively late, because he was over thirty when his Phantasy
was first performed; there had been an earlier Phantasie
Trio in 1907. Bridge had a long history as a chamber music
player extending back to 1902, and this experience clearly shows
in his idiomatic writing for the players. Oddly enough it has
a less classical feel than the Walton which precedes it on this
disc, despite its earlier date; this was clearly partly the
product of Bridge’s employment of the ‘fantasy’ form, but it
also looks forward to the days after the First World War when
he would become one of the most ‘progressive’ of English composers.
The often highly chromatic writing presents no difficulties
to the string players here, and they bring a nicely light touch
to the central Allegro section; Frith is in sparkling
form and brings a lovely touch of reminiscent longing to the
concluding bars.
It would not be appropriate to speak of early works in the context
of Lekeu, as he never produced any late ones, dying one day
after his twenty-fourth birthday. His last work, this Piano
Quartet, was left as a torso with only two movements and
the second of these had to be completed by the composer’s friend
and teacher Vincent d’Indy. What we have is therefore a fragment
of what was clearly intended to be a major work – Lekeu’s Piano
Trio is an equally expansive score – and it has an impassioned
and bold style. The trouble, as one constantly finds with Lekeu,
is the sense of the composer’s pushing against the limits of
chamber music; you feel he really wants and needs to work on
a larger scale, and is being frustrated by the limited forces
at his disposal. There is an Elgarian or Straussian personality
at work here which needs room to expand. The players rise to
the demands of the composer without being able to satisfy them
completely. They attack the rushing opening of the first movement
with all the headlong ferocity that is needed, and sustain the
right mood of impetuosity throughout.
Apart from the fact that these are all ‘early’ works - although
the Bridge is not that precocious, and the Lekeu was also his
last work - there seems to be precious little to link the three
quartets gathered on this disc; and that is unfortunate, since
apart from those who rightly admire these players it is difficult
to see precisely who this recording is intended to appeal to.
Those who like twentieth century English music will want the
Bridge and Walton, if they do not have them already, but will
not necessarily want the Lekeu; those who like music of the
school of César Franck - Lekeu was Belgian, like Franck who
was his teacher before d’Indy - would probably look for a coupling
of other music of that era. Either group would miss some glorious
performances of some wonderful music here. The recording is
superbly balanced in a nicely resonant acoustic which frames
the performances of these excellent artists perfectly.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Frith Piano Quartet (Benjamin Frith (piano); Robert Heard (violin):
Louise Williams (viola): Richard Jenkinson (cello))