Mátyás Seiber String Quartets Nos 1-3
Edinburgh Quartet
Mátyás Seiber (1905–60): String Quartets Nos 1-3
Edinburgh Quartet
String Quartet No 1
1 Maestoso – Allegro moderato [5:56]
2 Lento [6:04]
3 Rondo: Allegro [3:05]
String Quartet No 2
4 Allegro marcato – Allegro giusto [5:31]
5 Intermezzo: Alla “Blues” [5:38]
6 Presto [11:10]
Quartetto Lirico (String Quartet No 3)
7 Andante amabile [7:59]
8 Allegretto scherzando e leggiero [5:45]
9 Lento espressivo [9:04]
Total playing time [60:17]
In association with and with support from the Mátyás Seiber Trust
Recorded on 18-20 May 2009 at Prestonkirk Parish Church, East Linton
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Photography © Delphian Records
Design: John Christ www.johnchristdesign.com
Booklet editor: John Fallas
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
Tristan Gurney violin 1
Philip Burrin violin 2
Michael Beeston viola
Mark Bailey cello
A newcomer to Mátyás Seiber’s music could well begin by listening to his three string quartets. They will provide not only a skeleton biography of the composer, but also a synopsis of new musical developments in the first half of the twentieth century. Seiber’s first quartet comes from his student years; the second, written a decade later, shows how quick he was to absorb two of the century’s most vital influences – jazz and twelve-note music. The third quartet reveals the mature master: it belongs to what was to be the final decade of his work.
The very recent discovery of Seiber’s correspondence by his daughter Julia Seiber Boyd makes it possible to read the composer’s own words about two of the three quartets. Presumably responding to an enquiry, Seiber wrote to the musicologist Dr Mosco Carner on 27 March 1956 about String Quartet No 1:
This is really my Opus 1; it was written when I was still studying with Kodály at the Academy in Budapest. The work was written during the school year 1923–4 (age: 18) as models for various forms. The last movement was written first, and formally it is the most primitive of the three. It is an example of the simplest type of Rondo, with an 8-bar theme alternating with ‘couplets’. The first movement was last in composition, as it was an exercise in sonata form. The influence of Kodály and of Hungarian folk music is evident.
There is a cyclic element in the work: the motif of lower and upper auxiliary notes which is evident in the themes of the last and of the second movement first appears in the second part of the first subject in the first movement (viola solo).
In the slow movement, the upper ‘changing note’ becomes a minor third.
The first performance took place on 15 May 1925 at a public students’ concert in the Academy. (I see from the programme that the viola player was J. Lehner, later the viola player of the Kolisch Quartet.)
I still cherish the first criticism I got after this performance in one of the Budapest leading papers; if you consider how simple and tuneful this piece appears today, it sounds almost comic.
Seiber goes on to quote the largely hostile review, which blames the work’s shortcomings on his teacher Kodály. The article was in fact part of a campaign against Kodály’s teaching which was going on at that time. Eighty-five years later we are aware only of the work’s delightful quality which is shared by all youthful creations: that of ardour, freshness and spontaneity.
The next decade (1925–35) saw a rapid widening of Seiber’s activities and interests. After a brief spell of teaching in a Hungarian private school, he became a ship’s musician (playing cello) on the transatlantic run, visiting both north and south America. In 1928 he
joined the teaching staff of Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he established the world’s first department for the serious study of jazz. He also became a member of the Lenzevsky Quartet. Between 1933 and 1935 he returned to his native Budapest and also visited both Moscow and Leningrad as a journalist reporting on a music festival.
These were crucial years, for somehow he managed to find the time and energy not only to absorb but also to make creative use of much of the most advanced music of that era. He must have got to know Schoenberg’s twelve-note serial music as soon as it appeared (i.e. from 1923–4 onwards); Berg’s Lyric Suite of 1926 as well as the earlier String Quartet Op 3 (1910); possibly even Webern’s Five Pieces for String Quartet of 1909, as well as other music by Webern, then the most obscure of the Viennese Three. Nearer to home was the influence of Bartók: in particular the Third and Fourth Quartets of 1927 and 1928. The difficulty of access to these scores and infrequency of performances means that precise details must remain a matter of conjecture. But Seiber’s music was transformed by these influences, and gained much from them without losing its essential character.
String Quartet No 2 is a splendidly effective piece: tough, vigorous and boldly dissonant. It is Schoenbergian not only in its mastery
of basic twelve-note technique, but also in sharing the older composer’s respect for traditional forms. Nevertheless, if the first movement is written against the background of sonata form, the degree of perpetual variation of all elements obscures this fact. The continually varied presentation of the row subjects it to all the techniques associated with classic serialism. But there are also passages of savage double-stopping figures which recall Bartók in his most intransigent mood.
The twentieth-century equivalent of the minuet or scherzo, Seiber thought, must surely be the blues. In fact the second movement here, entitled ‘Intermezzo’, does not follow the 12-bar structure of the blues, but merely carries the character indication alla “Blues”. This is jazz as heard through the ears of Weill or Krenek. The ternary form of minuet-and-trio can just about be traced: the trio section introduces a flurry of new rhythmic figures and a sudden irruption of saltando and col legno playing. But both the initial ‘blues’ sections are themselves also ternary, with brief and violent middle sections.
The finale offers a plethora of these string players’ special effects. After the spectral semiquaver rustling of the start (faintly reminiscent of the Allegro misterioso movement of Berg’s Lyric Suite), a whole
polyphony of harmonics, of pizzicato, of col legno battuto, of thrummed harmonics, of glissandi are all detonated one after the other. They almost obscure the grand plan of the movement, which follows Schoenberg’s First Quartet and his Chamber Symphony in rolling together several movement characters into one continuous narrative. The opening pages are in scherzo character; this gives way to two episodes, the first featuring trills and athletic dotted rhythms, the second (after a rhapsodic interlude) quieter in character but just as fast as the first. This in turn cools down into a quiet chordal passage leading to a Lento, which stands in effect as the slow movement of the work, Bartókian in its narrow intervals and its melancholy character. The final section is Prestissimo – a gossamer will-o’-the-wisp piece of writing which suddenly dissolves into thin air.
The ISCM Festivals which were such a feature of the new music scene during the interwar years managed to survive the Second World War by migrating ‘for the duration’ to America. Seiber’s Second Quartet was first performed by the Roth Quartet at the 1941 ISCM Festival in New York. Composed in 1934–5, this quartet had been the last work Seiber completed before migrating to England in 1935. Another decade passed, during which he established himself at Morley College, founded the Dorian Singers, and began
through his teaching to influence a new generation of British composers. In 1946–7 he wrote his cantata Ulysses; in 1948 he started on three years’ work which resulted in a new quartet, the Quartetto Lirico (String Quartet
No 3). A letter to Norbert Brainin, leader of the Amadeus Quartet, written on 21 November 1951 explains much about the genesis and character of the new piece:
I am writing to tell you that after about three years of work I have finished my 3rd String Quartet (“Quartetto Lirico”) which is earmarked for next year’s International Festival in Salzburg. Now, this is what I particularly wanted to tell you – I meant to dedicate this work to your quartet, partly as a token of my appreciation of your playing … partly because [of] our old association which goes back to the beginning, or rather long before the beginning of your ensemble. I hope very much that you will be able to accept this dedication and give the first performance of the work. I thought of you often whilst writing this piece, which is a much more ‘warm’ and ‘romantic’ work than the 2nd quartet which you so heroically played some years ago. It is much easier, too, with a light, almost ‘Mendelssohnian’ Scherzo, and a slow last movement.
Nearly six years later, on 25 June 1957, Seiber wrote a letter to the secretary of the Amadeus Quartet in which he gives some details of the work’s structure:
The germ of the whole work lies in the curve of the initial motif with which the first Violin opens the first movement. This movement has a sonata-like disposition, with two distinct thematic groups and a closing group which gradually gets faster. The development is simple and tails off into a Cadenza. [The] Recapitulation begins with the second subject, followed by the closing group; the main subject comes last, followed by a quiet coda.
The second movement is a Scherzo of light and thin texture, built again on the same note-series as the first movement. The Trio brings a complete contrast: against the homogeneous material of the Scherzo, here many dissimilar elements are combined; against the grazioso lightness of the main part, the Trio is heavier, more violent and rhapsodic. After the varied Recapitulation there is a Stretto Coda.
The work closes with a slow movement, again thematically related to the previous two. The movement rises only once to a forte climax; the mood is throughout subdued and sombre and it becomes more and more desolate towards the end. The work ends with the same closing phrase as the first movement.
The Third Quartet has enjoyed the widest circulation of Seiber’s three quartets, and is one of his best-known works. It was premiered by its dedicatees, the Amadeus Quartet, at the LCMC (London Contemporary Music Centre) on 8 April 1952. (The projected
Salzburg performance in that year appears not to have taken place.) It was one of the very few contemporary works to be recorded by the Amadeus, who also took the work on a world tour which took them to North and South America, Australia and New Zealand amongst other countries. In 1955 the work was played at the ISCM Festival in BadenBaden. The Fryden Quartet of Sweden, the LaSalle Quartet (USA) and the Parrenin Quartet from Paris also took it up. It remains Seiber’s outstanding work of chamber music; this new recording will make it possible for another generation to experience its mastery.
© 2010 Hugh Wood
Hugh Wood is a composer – the author, among much other orchestral, vocal and chamber music, of five string quartets – and studied with Mátyás Seiber in 1958–9.
The Edinburgh Quartet
The Edinburgh Quartet was founded in 1959 and quickly became established as one of Britain’s foremost chamber ensembles, appearing regularly at prestigious venues across the country including London’s Wigmore Hall and South Bank Centre. It achieved international recognition after winning the Contemporary Prize at the Evianles-Bains String Quartet Competition, and has since toured extensively across Europe, the Far East, North and South America and the Middle East, as well as making numerous radio and television broadcasts within the UK. The year 2010 marks the quartet’s fiftieth anniversary, and it is now one of the longestrunning chamber ensembles in the UK, with a busier performing schedule than ever before.
The Quartet is resident at Glasgow University and Napier University and also collaborates with the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In addition to a regular classical concert series at each of these institutions, the Quartet is committed to nurturing talent and championing new music. It has worked with many important and prolific composers of our age, including James MacMillan, its patron, and Sir Michael Tippett, who selected the Edinburgh Quartet’s recording of his String Quartet No 1 for re-release on EMI shortly before his death.
The Edinburgh Quartet’s extensive discography features recordings on various labels including Delphian, Linn Records, Meridian and RCA. Recent releases include the complete string quartets of Hans Gál (Editor’s Choice – Gramophone, 2007), the complete string quartets of Kenneth Leighton (‘The unanimity of their ensemble, even at the densest polyphonic moments in flying scherzo tempo, is very impressive’ – BBC Music Magazine), discs of Bartók, Haydn and Schubert, and contributions to portrait discs of Robert Crawford (Delphian DCD34055), Edward Harper (DCD34069) and Thomas Wilson (DCD34079).
More from the Edinburgh Quartet on Delphian
Thomas Wilson: A Chamber Portrait
Simon Smith piano, Allan Neave guitar, Edinburgh Quartet DCD34079
An influential figure both personally and musically, Thomas Wilson was the leading light in a group of composers whose vision and technical assurance brought an international modernism into twentieth-century Scottish music. In the chamber works collected here, moments of extraordinary stillness continually release into fast, propulsive music whose compelling energies are matched by the individual and collective virtuosity of Simon Smith, Allan Neave and the Edinburgh Quartet.
‘Delphian are to be warmly congratulated for bringing these tough but elegant, closely argued and well-crafted works to a wider public with superbly committed performances in vivid recordings’ — Tempo, October 2009
The Cold Dancer: Contemporary String Quartets from Scotland Clapperton – Dempster – Sweeney – Weir / Edinburgh Quartet DCD34038
Rich and personal contributions to the quartet tradition from four contemporary Scottish composing voices, ranging from the lyrical profundity of Kenneth Dempster’s meditation on a George Mackay Brown poem to a characteristically idiosyncratic and yet songful work by Judith Weir. Blazing, committed performances by the Edinburgh Quartet celebrate the immense variety and vitality of work on offer.
‘on this outstanding CD, driven by scorchingly focused performances from the Edinburgh Quartet, the impact of the four pieces is colossal … Each of the composers is at his and her peak, and the Edinburgh Quartet has never played better. It’s nothing less than a landmark.’ — The Herald, February 2007
More 20th-century music on Delphian
Robert Crawford: Piano Quintet, music for solo piano
Edinburgh Quartet, Nicholas Ashton piano DCD34055
Elder statesman of the Scottish music scene, Robert Crawford has throughout his life lavished intense care upon every one of his comparatively few compositions. The Edinburgh Quartet and pianist
Nicholas Ashton are intimately acquainted with Crawford’s work, and mirror the composer’s attention to detail in a long overdue survey of this lovingly crafted music, spanning sixty years of compositional activity.
‘an impressive collection … committed and excellent performances’
— Musical Opinion, March/April 2008
‘splendid, incisive playing’
— The Wire, April 2008
Hafliði Hallgrímsson: Metamorphoses
Fidelio Trio, Matthew Jones viola DCD34059
A chamber-music portrait of Hafliði Hallgrímsson, one of the leading figures in the recent flowering of Icelandic music. Enigmatic yet eloquent, inscrutable and self-contained, these exquisitely crafted, jewel-like works reflect the personality of the composer himself as well as his multifaceted literary and artistic interests and influences.
‘The Fidelio Trio … capture its delicate shades and mournful undertones to rewarding ends’
— The Scotsman, February 2008
‘powerfully poignant as well as beautiful’’
— Sunday Times, February 2008
Luigi Dallapiccola: a portrait David Wilde piano, Susan Hamilton soprano, Nicola Stonehouse mezzo-soprano, Robert Irvine cello DCD34020
Luigi Dallapiccola is one of the most celebrated Italian composers of the twentieth century. This disc features chamber music and songs alongside his complete works for solo piano. Whether drawing on the music of the past to nourish the contrapuntal organisation of his own, or concentrating on the opportunities for gentle lyricism afforded by belllike vocal and instrumental sonorities, Dallapiccola’s commitment to traditional expressive nuance has been seen by critics as a powerful aspect of his Italian insistence upon cantabilità – songfulness.
‘a marriage of discipline and imagination of which Wilde is fully aware … [Nicola Stonehouse] is eloquence itself in the Goethe-Lieder’ — Gramophone, April 2007
Kenneth Leighton: complete music for solo piano Angela Brownridge piano DCD34301 (3 CDs)
The complete solo piano music of Kenneth Leighton (1929–1988) is presented for the first time, on three discs containing many world premiere recordings. Written for Leighton’s own instrument, and played here by his distinguished pupil Angela Brownridge, these works span Leighton’s entire compositional career.
‘An eloquent survey of Leighton’s substantial and marvellously idiomatic piano music … this is an important set that deserves widespread currency’ — Gramophone
‘Brownridge plays superbly throughout … fully up to the technical, intellectual and characterizing demands of this music’
— International Record Review, June 2005
