for March 11 07... - Elgar's string quartet in E minor. Even though or maybe because in this (and other works around the same time) he sounds less like "Elgar" - or rather, there's less of that Elgar that does put some people off, that did put me off once... - than before.
(Information from
www.elgar.org, in particular
this page about the string quartet.)
The quartet is one of the four works he finished - violin sonata, string quartet, piano quintet, cello concerto (1917-1919) before his wife's death in 1920 after which nothing emerged completed from his "workshop" other than brief suites, I believe (the incomplete sketches still amount to a handful in themselves, over a hundred- I'm not sure quite how many? pages of impressive music- including a third symphony in pieces whose completion/realization I've enthused over...) (Of these four works, I like the piano quintet, only know the violin sonata sort of, and love the cello concerto...)
Its slow movement, rightly marked
Piacevole (poco andante) (Peaceful - somewhat at an ambling pace may be a good translation - andante now means a somewhat slow tempo with a feeling of movement, I think- its history in music is interesting, but irrelephant here. :) Piacevole, peaceful, fits, though, yes... and a troubled peace, but not interrupted by possibly out of place feeling contrasts - the troubles, odd harmonies, progressions (that I don't associate with Edward Elgar but... there we are!) "feel" inside its melodic flow, belong, not inserted?)
The opening of the third movement shoots in like a rocket after the song that precedes it, though :)
I praised Gabriel Fauré in a very early post in this blog and recommended his chamber music highly. He also wrote a string quartet, also in E minor, also his only one, late in his life - in 1923, after Elgar's. The two remind me of each other, though Elgar's quartet slow movement impresses itself on my mind more. Glad I've heard both and fairly often though. (Not sure I have a recording of the Elgar just now aside from a very good and persistent memory- which led to the writing of this post, of course :) - of parts of it - I think I do, from a recent broadcast; I used to have a CD paired with one of Sir William Walton's two string quartets, very different from Elgar's, characteristic of Walton, worth hearing.)
(Edit: may see about borrowing the score from the library, using LilyPond, stashing the openings of the movements at a later date.)
