The Weir and the Maxwell
Davies quartets were new to me and my
search for alternative recordings has
been unsuccessful. Weir’s Quartet –
only her second work for string ensemble
after the String Trio of 1985 – was
originally written for the Endellion
Quartet in 1990. It is in part based
on a number of her songs, though these
are pretty much of a starting-point.
The result is a highly substantial,
strongly emotional composition with
plenty of attractive textures; her consciously
avoiding techniques such as col legno
results in an extremely well-crafted
work full of atmosphere.
Equally impressive
are the two Little Quartets by Maxwell
Davies which have not yet been released
by Naxos. The second had a spectacular
genesis: initially composed for Henze’s
1977 Montepulciano Festival, it was
lost in the mail, and was re-written
only in 1987, five years after the composition
of the first quartet. The first Little
Quartet with its sparse textures in
the first movement, the lively second
and the lyrical third, as well as the
short (some 4 minutes) one-movement
second Little Quartet offer plenty of
opportunities for the members of one
of the foremost East German orchestras
to excel technically. They tackle this
unusual repertoire at the highest level
of accomplishment.
In the company of the
more contemporary works the Elgar attains
a somewhat different quality. This is
aided by a kind of "Germanic"
approach which places the work even
more firmly in the Beethoven–Brahms–Schoenberg
tradition. This adds certain aspects
though it also takes away quite a bit
of Elgar’s famous "Englishness";
what I would like to call the "Elgarian
line" which is a very typical way
of melodic invention and development.
For my part, when listening to Elgar
I want to hear Elgar and not a German
tradition - one might sometimes even
call it "ignorance" - which
sadly I have to encounter fairly regularly
when German ensembles perform British
music. I soon became bored by this interpretation.
The mere expression of Elgar’s compositional
techniques does not in itself result
in a lively performance. This is somewhat
self-contented and self-contained though
technically speaking at an exceptionally
secure level.
Sadly, the booklet
notes display the usual ignorance of
British music - knowledge of Elgar in
Germany is still in a deplorable state
- and the English translation is in
part even worse. The translators apparently
did not know what a Master of the
Queen’s Music is. Thus this engaging
undertaking is marred by a few drawbacks.
Still, the overall impression is favourable,
especially with regard to the value
of the new recordings of the Weir and
Maxwell Davies. The recording engineers
of Mid-German Radio (mdr) offer excellent
sound in an appropriate acoustics
Jürgen Schaarwächter
See also review
by Hubert Culot
for details
Reinhold-Quartett 
