Disc Details

Contents

Work Title	Composer
Naxos Quartet No. 3	Peter Maxwell Davies	Listen
Naxos Quartet No. 4	Peter Maxwell Davies	Listen

Reviews

• Considered as a pair, they take the Naxos cycle into unanticipated territories, and make for a fascinating, if at times uncomfortable, instalment in the project. The start of the third Naxos Quartet does not immediately reveal Davies's outrage at the Iraq invasion. Indeed, compared to the expositions of the first two quartets, there are significantly fewer juxtapositions of contrasting material, with a corresponding emphasis on continuity, as well as a much more audible sense of harmonic direction. But as the movement progresses, the musical surface becomes increasingly distorted, culminating in a savage march that is rendered somewhat ridiculous by the use of complex cross rhythms. The way in which this evaporates into a beautiful 'slow meditation' is vintage Maxwell Davies: the juxtaposition of the absurd and the lyrical intensifies both.
  
  The slow movement continues the protest by means of the avoidance, and then subsequent distortion of, the 'In Nomine' melody. Here too is a re-emergence of the scherzo material left in the 'stratosphere' at the end of the first quartet, part of Davies's original inception of connecting members of the cycle. However, the material is appreciably slower in the third quartet than in the first, almost as if in the interim it had been contaminated and weighed down by the external political situation. The third movement (a series of inventions after Bach) expands this material, culminating in a nauseating 'hymn' in which the use of slow, wide vibrato serves to exaggerate the grotesquery.
  
  As in the first three movements, the final fugue turns towards to the end to contemplate Iraq, by means of allusions to the parodistic elements within the quartet as a whole. Thus although the quartet makes use of numerous traditional polyphonic genres (doubtless part of the original conception of the work), none of the 'abstract' designs are allowed to run their course, to find closure on their own terms. The use of parody enables the external world to 'enter' and disrupt the otherwise 'purely musical' discourse. In reference to the quartet (and therefore Iraq) Davies had commented that it is 'just impossible to neither see, nor hear' what is happening; his music is a powerful artistic response from someone who both sees and hears what is happening around him.
  
  The fourth Naxos Quartet is the first in the cycle to be cast in a single movement. Taking Brueghel's picture of children's games as inspiration, the work juxtaposes active episodes (representing the more exuberant children's games) with slower ones (quieter pursuits). An opening idea encompassing a progression from F to B encapsulates the overall tonal argument; transformations of this motion provide the warp and weft of the various sections. More immediate is the continued sense of vividly characterised episodes drawing us into new expressive areas.
  
  In his programme note to the work, Davies notes that in thinking about children's games, he was unable to avoid the underlying adult motives of aggression and war, and their consequences. In this sense, the fourth quartet is not a lighter contrast to the third, but rather a companion piece exploring the same dark corners of the human condition.
  
  The Magginis are persuasive and responsive interpreters of Davies's music ... the Naxos Quartets are rigorous, (for some) challenging, and immensely rewarding. Given the strong recorded performances, and the budget price that they have been released at, I have no hesitation in recommending them.
  Edward Venn, Tempo, 01 October 2005
• The first two in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's cycle of 10 Naxos quartets presaged great things, an impression amply confirmed by this no less rewarding second volume containing Nos 3 and 4.
  
  Work on the Third Quartet during the spring of 2003 was profoundly affected, the composer informs us in his booklet-note, by news of the invasion of Iraq. Presumably, then, it's not too fanciful to ascribe certain aspects of the score to his dismay at that conflict. Sample the development section of the first-movement March (described by its creator as a 'military march of a fatuous and splintered nature'), the queasily wide vibrato that discolours the short hymn marked stucchevole (meaning 'cloying' or 'nauseating') towards the end of the third movement ('Four Inventions and a Hymn'), or the questioning demeanour of the finale ('Fuga'). At the same time, the quartet stands up convincingly on its own terms. I am mightily impressed by its unerring sense of growth, proportion and contrapuntal ingenuity (Davies states that, prior to composition, he embarked upon a fruitful re-examination of Bach's Two- and Three-part Inventions), while the slow movement ('In Nomine') incorporates the magical return of the ghostly, ethereal dialogue 'left hanging in the air' at the end of the First Quartet. I attended the October 2003 world premiere given by the Maggini at London's Wigmore Hall and can report that the taut realisation fully replicates the extraordinary electricity of that memorable occasion.
  
  Cast in a single movement lasting just under 25 minutes, Naxos No 4 takes its cue from Bruegel's Children's Games (a canvas which also inspired Davies's Sixth Strathclyde Concerto, for flute and orchestra). The composer had originally intended it to be 'lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor', but a fretful mood underpins the relentless logic of this music with its protean motivic transformations and intriguing harmonic byways. Davies's immaculately judged part-writing displys a bracing mastery of the idiom and, needless to say, the Magginis once again play with superlative poise and intelligence.
  
  Both sound and balance are first-rate. I impatiently await the next installment.
  Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone, 01 June 2005
• The third was intended, explains Maxwell Davies, to explore the 'compositional potentialities of a magic square of Saturn within one of Mars within one of Venus [...] developed alongside an independent square of the Moon'. But whether devices like this can be heard is now not the point - the quartet's composition was interrupted by the invasion of Iraq and it thus became a spontaneous response to that.
  
  Perhaps this is not the place for political argument but you can't help share Maxwell Davies' frustration and anger at the invasion while listening to the quartet. Indeed, while listening to the first movement - a fatuous march - I was sure that wrath itself actually jumped out of my stereo and grabbed me by the neck.
  
  The fourth quartet, a one-movement work, is claimed by the composer to be lighter and less fierce. It is based on a Brueghel picture of children's games, but it seems that Maxwell Davies saw more in the picture than its initial appearance and at times this quartet feels distorted. He has, however, an uncanny knack of making you want to hear more...
  Sophie Lang, MUSO Magazine, 01 June 2005
• …these two works find [Max] at his formidable best. The finest of the Third Quartet's four movements is its second, a brooding meditation. And the Fourth Quartet's single-movement span is surprisingly easy to follow, thanks to Davies's mastery of the medium. The Maggini Quartet's playing - ultra-vivid and alert - is top flight.
  Malcolm Hayes, Classic fM Magazine, 01 May 2005
• Davies initially intended his third Naxos Quartet, written in the spring of 2003, to be a work of formidable organisational complexity. Its forms would be related magic squares; it would also make use of a plainsong associated with the Feast of St Cecilia. The invasion of Iraq took it in a different direction. The result is a powerful piece, conveying desolation and a sense of frustration. Its single-movement successor, subtitled Children's Games and inspired by the Bruegel painting, was intended as its antithesis. Yet Davies cannot avoid reading adult motives into the games the music reflects, so it is also a work of unexpected darkness, about conflict and a sadder side of the human condition. The Maggini Quartet play both works with finesse.
  Stephen Pettitt, The Sunday Times, 17 April 2005
• Both works are based upon Davies's now familiar range of technical devices - the magic squares, transformations of plainsong fragments and carefully plotted harmonic progressions - but they also graft on further musical references and carry layers of extra-musical allusion. No 3, with its minatory opening march, deliberately grotesque scherzo and bleak finale, is Davies's response to the invasion of Iraq, while the single-movement Fourth was designed to be much lighter and less aggressive than its predecessor, with Breughel's painting of children's games as its direct inspiration.
  Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 15 April 2005
• Maxwell Davies tells us that the Third Quartet began as a work to explore the creative potential of certain magic square tonal associations based on the Plainsong celebrating St. Cecelia on Nov. 22. This Quartets' development was affected by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Third Quartet is in four movements: The first "A military march of a fatuous and splintered nature", the second a slow In Nomine "quietly distorted and dissonant, that is, very much not 'In Nomine'. The third movement, titled Four Inventions and a Hymn, is a burlesque which borrows fom Bach's Inventions. It is marked 'stucchevole' (cloying,nauseating) towards its end. The fourth movement, Fugue recalls the style of the Italian fugue rather than Bach. It is subdued, ruminative, dispairing. Maxwell Davies describes the end of the movement: "Here in unison with the cello line, I imagine a baritone voice intoning Michelangelo's words: 'While damage and shame persist, it is my great fortune to neither see nor hear- so please do not disturb me, and speak quietly.'"
  
  The Naxos Quartet No.4 was written in 2004 "with the intention of producing something lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor." Inspired by the Brueghel masterpiece of 1560, Children's Games, it is a single movement pastiche of often vigorous musical impressions of Brueghel's catalog of children at play. A circus of visual movement is depicted musically as interlocking games played back and forth by the four members of the string quartet. This is deft, tight musical composition stretching the resources of string quartet structure as well as the listener who must become an active player.
  Ronald Legum, www.audaud.com
• Following the success of Peter Maxwell Davies's first two 'Naxos Quartets', the third and fourth in the series are fully up to the standard established at the start of this unique project.
  
  This is mature music full of emotional power, intellectual rigour and fascinating aural perspectives, especially in its quieter moments. The long 'In Nomine' slow movement of the third quartet, for example, is beguilingly beautiful in the ways it explores aspects of the traditional plainsong theme before letting us hear it complete, albeit in a dissonantly fractured form, towards the end.
  
  Maxwell Davies originally intended to make the third quartet a 'concentrated attempt at virtuoso composition' in response to a study of Bach's keyboard Inventions (he also refers to magic squares as a structural discipline), but the conflict in Iraq affected its progress. So, although the third and fourth movements' titles — 'Four Inventions' and a 'Hymn and Fugue' — pay nominal allegiance to Bach, the actual music has elements of irony and conflict. There's grotesqueness too, in the short Hymn, which Maxwell Davies marks stucchevole (cloying, nauseating), a strange sound of wobbly vibrato and out-of-tune playing.
  
  As an 'unpremeditated and spontaneous reaction to the illegal invasion' the first movement, 'March', most clearly represents the composer's view of events in Iraq, with the opening material developing into a 'fatuous and splintered' military march before eventually becoming a 'ghost' of itself in the slow coda.
  
  'Naxos Quartet' No. 4, in a single 25-minute movement, 'lighter and much less fierce than its predecessor', is just as complex in its construction and listening demands. However, despite the title 'Children's Games' inspired by Brueghel's painting, it's hardly a fun piece. The various fast and slow passages juxtapose different activities, although we are not told precisely what they are. As a result the work unfolds in a sectional and somewhat disjointed way. It does progress harmonically but there is little sense of thematic development, more a succession of contrasts.
  
  Most people will need to hear these uncompromising quartets more than once to fully appreciate them, a task made rewardingly easy by the Maggini Quartet. The immediacy and understanding of this wonderful ensemble, expressed by tonal richness, perfect technique and musical sensitivity of the highest order, pulls one into Maxwell Davies's difficult music with an almost hypnotic force. Irresistible.
  David Hart, www.andante.com