I can thoroughly recommend the new CD of music by Donald Tovey on Guild. It contains the String Quartet in G, Op.23 (1909, pub.1914) and the Aria and Variations, Op.11 (1900) for string quartet...
http://www.guildmusic.com/shop/wbc.php?sid=1630300ac88d&tpl=produktdetail.html&pid=12083&rid=261&recno=1 (http://www.guildmusic.com/shop/wbc.php?sid=1630300ac88d&tpl=produktdetail.html&pid=12083&rid=261&recno=1)
The music is just wonderful - so beautifully worked out and so euphonious. Overall, immensely satisfying music by a master craftsman.
The idiom? Brahmsian, I suppose, but the scale is bigger and the themes themselves don't sound particularly like Brahms.
The string quartet (along with his second, op. 24 in D) appeared at Sibley Library and from there at IMSLP, and I've been curious what it sounds like. Thanks, I hope to hear the CD.
This has now been announced in the Records International catalogue (http://www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=11M062). Of the first piece the author (whose name you've mentioned a few times with praise on this forum, deservedly) calls the title of the first piece on the CD's program, Aria and Variations, "innocuous-sounding" before noting that it's one of the longest single-movement pieces for string quartet he's encountered.
Innocuous-sounding it may be, but it also hearkens back to a certain work by Bach (on which I believe Tovey was later to write a major program note that was published as part of his series of essays) :) Just saying...
Eric
It's a very fine CD. The only negative observation I've read concerns the tendency of all the music to a certain sameness of tempo; however, this didn't bother me at all.
Quote from: Alan Howe on Monday 01 November 2010, 13:51
It's a very fine CD. The only negative observation I've read concerns the tendency of all the music to a certain sameness of tempo; however, this didn't bother me at all.
I hope to hear it- I enjoy what I have heard by him, especially his chamber music, so far. Thank you.
I listened to the string quartet op. 23 twice over this weekend, and indeed it is a lovely piece. It has a certain kind of melancholy which I find very attractive, like a swan song to a disappearing epoch.
The playing of the Tippett Quartet is wonderful.
I am not that much a Tovey fan - apart from the Piano Concerto - but you are right about the op. 23 quartet. Exactly how I feel about it.