Walton: Piano Quartet

“This excellent Hyperion issue brings together a wide-ranging group of Walton's chamber works, from his earliest major work, the Piano Quartet, originally written when he was 16, to his last instrumental piece, the Passacaglia, which he composed for Rostropovich when he was nearly 80. As a substantial bonus there's the little song cycle for tenor and guitar, Anon in Love, as well as the two shorter pieces.
Helped by a spacious recording, the extra lightness and clarity brings an element of fantasy into such a movement as the Scherzo of the Piano Quartet and an extra tenderness into the lovely slow movement. Nowhere else does Walton so enthusiastically use modal thematic material, starting with the mysterious opening theme, which the Nash players take very reflectively at a speed much slower than the movement's main tempo, Allegramente. It's an astonishingly confident work for so young a composer, with adventurous writing for the strings that belies the fact that Walton was no string-player.
The Violin Sonata, a more elusive work, long underestimated, is given an equally persuasive performance, with Marianne Thorsen, accompanied by Ian Brown, freely expressive. John Mark Ainsley is totally undaunted by the taxing vocal writing of Anon in Love, originally designed for Peter Pears. And Craig Ogden is an ideal accompanist, totally idiomatic, adding sparkle to the vigorous songs in this offbeat collection.
Though Ian Brown gives a slightly sluggish account of Façade's 'Valse' – in the awkward piano transcription ascribed to Walton himself – cellist Paul Watkins crowns the disc with a fine reading of the solo Passacaglia.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The Maggini Quartet give refined and powerful performances in this Naxos release. The opening of the 1947 String Quartet is presented in hushed intimacy, making the contrast all the greater when Walton's richly lyrical writing emerges in full power. There's a tender, wistful quality here, which culminates in a rapt, intense account of the slow movement, where the world of late Beethoven comes much closer than most interpreters have appreciated. The poignancy of those two longer movements is then set against the clean bite of the second movement Scherzo and the brief hectic finale, with their clear and transparent textures. With Peter Donohoe a powerful and incisive presence, and the Maggini Quartet again playing most persuasively, the early Piano Quartet is also given a performance of high contrasts, enhanced by a refined recording which conveys genuine pianissimos that are free from highlighting. If, in the first three movements, the pentatonic writing gives little idea of the mature Walton to come, some characteristic rhythmic and other devices are already apparent. Even the pentatonicry suggests that the boy had been looking at the Howells Piano Quartet rather than any Vaughan Williams. It's in the finale that one gets the strongest Waltonian flavour in vigorously purposeful argument, though there the echoes are different, and Stravinsky's Petrushka is an obvious influence. The only reservation is that the piano is rather too forwardly balanced.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“there are good reasons for having the Bridge, Bax and Walton together. While individual rivals may be slightly preferable in some respects, there’s never much in it and there’s the additional attraction of discovering a talented young group of performers.” MusicWeb International, 22nd May 2013

“The Frith Piano Quartet delivers committed and entirely convincing accounts of these three works, each of these pieces being notable to some degree in the output of the individual composers.” International Record Review, May 2012

“A starry level of professional chamber-music playing is par for the course in these islands. Even so, the quality on display here - above all, the near-perfect interplay between collective statement and individual contribution - puts these performances in the top flight.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2012 *****

“[The last movement of the Walton] is a superbly feisty bit of writing, with a sense of headlong drive which anticipates Belshazzar’s Feast, and the players enjoy every minute of it, rampaging fearlessly through some ferociously difficult passages...The recording is superbly balanced in a nicely resonant acoustic which frames the performances of these excellent artists perfectly.” MusicWeb International, March 2012