Smyth/Delius: String Quartets
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ETHEL SMYTH / FREDERICK DELIUS
Smyth/Delius: String Quartets
Villiers Quartet
[ Naxos / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 14 October 2022
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The String Quartet in E minor by Ethel Smyth, one of the most innovative and original figures in English music, has a masterful coherence and consistency. With eloquent writing for the viola in particular, it is both playful and reverential, and ends with a flourish - forthright, bold and uncompromising, like Smyth herself. Delius wrote the early String Quartet in 1888 but it was rejected for performance and he was later to reuse the Scherzo for his mature Quartet of 1916-19 (8.573586). In 2018 the score of the two opening movements of the 1888 Quartet, long assumed lost, reappeared at auction and have been edited and reunited with the final two in this premiere recording, which adds significantly to our understanding of Delius's early compositional directions.
The Villiers focuses on British works as seen with their Peter Racine Fricker disc on 8.571374 about which Gramophone wrote, 'Listening to these marvellously sympathetic, well-prepared performances from the Villiers Quartet, one wonders why they are not better known.' They are also a strong presence on a William Sterndale Bennett disc on 8.571379: 'Brilliant and scintillating are adjectives that could be used to describe these performances as well' (Fanfare)
