| Label: CHANDOS
Catalog: CHAN10661
Format: CD Gramophone Awards Finalist 2011 - Chamber Recording
Wholenote Discoveries - May 2011
Sir William Walton was still a teenage undergraduate at Oxford when he started his first string quartet in 1919. Completed in 1922, its few performances were unsatisfactory, and despite several cuts and revisions the quartet was withdrawn by the composer. It was revived in its revised version after Walton’s death in 1983, but the Doric String Quartet here gives us the premiere recording of the full-length original version. Despite the composer’s negative assessment – it was, he said, “full of undigested Bartok and Schoenberg” – it’s a fascinating and extremely challenging three-movement work, with a massive and astonishing fugal finale that isn’t out of place besides Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. Dating from the mid-1940s, Walton’s second quartet is, not surprisingly, from a different world, and more in the language that we associate with the mature composer. There is contrapuntal skill here too, though, together with Walton’s usual lyricism. The Doric Quartet is superb in both works, and beautifully recorded. This is a significant addition to the catalogue of 20th century string quartet recordings. Terry Robbins  Price: $25.98 |
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