Benjamin Britten - String Quartet No. 1, Op. 25

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976) - String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 25 (1941)

I. Andante sostenuto - Allegro vivo [0:00]
II. Allegretto con slancio [9:13]
III. Andante calmo [12:21]
IV. Molto vivace [22:36]

Maggini Quartet (1998)

Britten's String Quartet No. 1 is his first numbered string quartet, although he had written a few compositions for string quartet earlier in his life. The work is in four movements and typically lasts around 26 minutes. The first and third movements, at about 10 minutes each, are much longer than the second and fourth, at about 3 minutes each.

"In July 1941, while still in the States, Britten received a $400 commission from an American patroness, Mrs Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, which presented him with the opportunity to compose his ‘official’ String Quartet No 1. Mrs Coolidge was a passionate devotee of the genre, and had already commissioned Bartók’s Fifth Quartet (1934) and Schoenberg’s Fourth (1936). Britten’s contribution was composed in the humble surroundings of a tool shed located in the garden of Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson, the British husband-and-wife piano duo who were his hosts during a stay in California. The finished quartet was first performed in September 1941 in Los Angeles, and earned its composer the Library of Congress Coolidge Medal for Eminent Services to Chamber Music. It is evident from Britten’s correspondence that his attitude to the commission was somewhat ambivalent. To his friend Elizabeth Mayer he confessed that the project would be ‘a bit of a sweat to do it so quickly, but I’ll do it as the cash will be useful!’, and to his older brother Robert he reported:

'I’m to be presented with a gold medal at the Library of Congress in Washington in October, by Mrs Sprague Coolidge (the rich patroness of music, friend of Frank Bridge) for services to chamber music! Gettin’ quite distinguished arn’t I? But it doesn’t mean any money, unless I sell the medal, which wouldn’t be quite quite. Still the old girl has just bought a String Quartet off me for quite a sum, which will keep the wolf away for a bit, so I can’t complain.'

More seriously, however, Britten told his benefactress that he rated the quartet as ‘my best piece so far’, and the Times critic wrote after its first English performance by the Griller Quartet in April 1943: ‘It looks as though he has begun to advance from his easy accomplishment into some new phase of development in his thought which will be watched with interest.’ The reviewer went on to describe the musical idiom as ‘unconventional’ and ‘experimental’ with its ‘harshly contrasted elements’, referring to the juxtapositions of passages in slow and quick tempos in the first movement inspired by Beethoven’s B flat major Quartet, Op 130. The ethereal diatonic opening to the work suggests the strong influence of neoclassical Stravinsky, as distinctively modified by the music of Copland, by whom Britten was befriended at the time of composition."

"The work immediately demonstrates Britten's extraordinary ear for instrumental sound with the high close intervals of the two violins against cello pizzicato, a soundscape that he would return to in Peter Grimes' Dawn Sea Interlude. This Tempo I episode contrasts in a Rondo form with the faster, lower sounds of the Tempo II Allegro vivo. After the brittle, march-like Scherzo with its parallels with Shostakovich, premonitions of Grimes (the Moonlight Sea Interlude) return in the 5/4 gently rocking sea swell of the Andantino calmo, a calm which is interrupted by a forceful, declamatory middle section. Further contrasting passages in the last movement include the scherzo-like rapidly running counterpoint of its opening, sharp, punctuated chords and the strong unison theme from the two violins and viola."

(sources: Wikipedia, https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw..., http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/...)