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“Eloquent and sensitive performances of some of the finest British chamber works of our century” BBC Music Magazine | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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“Although many accounts of the Prokofiev have appeared over the years, none has approached, let alone surpassed, the Hollywood version of the Second Quartet. The same would no doubt apply to the Hindemith but for the fact that there have been fewer challengers. What a wonderful feeling for line these players had, what an incredible, perfectly matched and blended ensemble – and how well these transfers sound! That goes for the Walton, too: there's no other account of it that makes so positive a case for it.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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“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 | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Walton & Elgar: String Quartets
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| |  | William Walton: String Quartets
This new release represents one of the comparatively rare recordings of the highly attractive string quartets by William Walton, one of England’s finest composers. The works are performed by the Doric String Quartet, exclusive Chandos artists and among the youngest and most impressive quartets on the classical music scene today. Their recent release, of the string quartets by Korngold (CHAN10611), was given ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone. Walton’s two string quartets, written about a quarter of a century apart, are barely recognisable as the work of the same composer. The String Quartet of 1922, an extraordinarily ambitious work in terms of scale and technical demands, was written when Walton was in his late teens. The familiar Quartet in A minor is a work of Walton’s maturity, more compact in form, conservative in language, and relaxed in tone. When first performed, the String Quartet of 1922 was met with a lukewarm response, which led Walton to withdraw it and to make several substantial cuts to the material. When the work was revived, a few years after his death, for performances and recordings – including its premiere recording, on Chandos (CHAN8944, Gabrieli String Quartet) – these cuts were kept. This particular recording, however, offers the full-length and original version, as edited by Hugh MacDonald in 2008 for Oxford University Press’s William Walton Edition. Significantly, this quartet is for the most part conspicuously lacking in the Stravinskyan constant changes of time signature, which are such a prominent feature of the later works by Walton. In the composer’s own words, this work is ‘full of undigested Bartók and Schoenberg’. It seems to have been in the late 1930s that Walton first agreed to write the String Quartet in A minor for the Blech Quartet (led by Harry Blech who later became the founding conductor of the London Mozart Players). But during the Second World War other projects intervened, mainly scores for war-time propaganda films, and it was not until late 1944 that Walton started work on the quartet. The return to the string quartet genre did not come easily to Walton. As he wrote to a friend in 1945, ‘I’m in a suicidal struggle with four strings and am making no headway whatsoever. Brick walls, slit trenches… I’m afraid I’ve done film music for too long’. Despite his initial difficulty, the work gradually took shape, and Walton wrote to the same friend a short time later that he had ‘captured a trench’ and ‘overcome some barbed wire entanglements’. The String Quartet in A minor was completed in time for its successful premiere in 1947 by the Blech Quartet in a chamber concert on the BBC’s new Third Programme. “The Doric gives outstanding, virtuoso performances of William Walton’s two string quartets. The first of them, formidable in its technical demands and harmonic language, is virtually unrecognisable from the Walton of maturity...but, when played with such panache, it provides a pungent contrast to the clarity and spry rhythmic sparring of the later A minor Quartet.” The Telegraph, 25th February 2011 ***** “Hats off first for the stunning recording. Every bow stroke hits home as if the players are there in your living room. Another bouquet for the musicians’ mastery of the three Ps: polish, passion, precision. Absorbing repertoire, too.” The Times, 5th March 2011 **** “The Doric Quartet responds with great understanding to it and does well in making the most of the parts of the two works when, for different reasons, a good counsel for the defence is called for. The recording, too, gives an excellent account of music that, even when Walton was young and inexperienced, shows the keenness of his ear for texture.” International Record Review, March 2011 “Walton’s two string quartets make a satisfying disc, and this recording of No 1 has the advantage of being the first of the uncut original version...Both works are superbly played by the Doric String Quartet.” Sunday Times, 20th March 2011 *** “[a] blazingly committed and triumphantly assured rendering [of the early Quartet]...I was particularly smitten with the Doric's glowing treatment of the rapturous slow movement [of the A minor]...which they survey with a beguiling, almost conversational flow yet no loss of intimacy or piercing ardour...Make no mistake, this is a terrific disc in every way.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2011 “the early Quartet is a remarkable creation, with its searching chromaticism, huge technical strength, and formidable finale...The Doric Quartet play both works with an ultra-focused vividness that's very effective in bringing out the early Quartet's sophisticated, Schoenberg-influenced range of light and shade.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2011 *** | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. (Available now to download.) |
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| |  | Sir William Walton: The Collector's Edition
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Penguin Guide
Gramophone Awards 2011