No devotee of the string quartet can go for long, in this country at least, without encountering the work of Dame Elizabeth Maconchy. Her output of quartets covers 50 years, from the First Quartet of 1932-3 to the Quartetto Corto (No. 13) of 1984; her music is always genuinely rewarding, both for the listener and for the player—without condescension or self-conscious simplification, the quartets are almost entirely within the grasp of competent amateurs. Many is the time I have wanted to follow up a first encounter by means of a recording. Now Unicorn-Kanchana and the Hanson Quartet have given us the chance to do just that, and the quality of both playing and recording have done the music proud.
As the composer's daughter Nicola LeFanu puts it in her biographical note: ''From the outset Elizabeth Maconchy handles the string quartet medium with absolute confidence''. Indeed, from its initial assertive unison E flats to its lithe D major conclusion, the First Quartet is an arresting and remarkably assured piece of work, characteristic in its concision (the slow movement at 4'35'' is the longest of the four) and in its rhythmical energy. The music, albeit dependent for its growth on the trelliswork of simple traditional forms, grows none the less. Above all, it has its own special flavour, a kind of harmonic pungency over and above the obvious indebtedness to Bartok.
The Second Quartet of 1936 is avowedly a more inward-looking work, again non-centric in tonality (it progresses from G to C). The first and third movements are slow, the one reaching a stirring Bartokian central climax, the other punctuated by Janacekian bursts of passion. The finale borrows again from Bartok (First Quartet, finale) and moves impressively to its resilient conclusion while the fast scherzo second movement is again invigorating and engaging, with its own personal brand of 'sprung rhythm'.
The Third Quartet (1938) sets out a continuous five-section arch-structure whose opening lento is a rare reminder of Maconchy's studies with Vaughan Williams. The Fourth (1942–3) returns to the classical four-movement layout and to the rhythmic preoccupations of the first two quartets; a diatonic waltz episode in the presto finale, like a Georgian building in a modern estate, provides a curious, but welcome example of stylistic dualism.
Motivic economy and lean contrapuntal textures are shared concerns of Quartets Nos. 2 to 4. For the most part the motivic cell-structures are convincingly animated, as if by a kind of invisible musical DNA, but occasionally one wonders whether too much is not asked of this technique. Musical dialogue, as the composer states in her forthright note, is of the essence in quartet writing but I can imagine some listeners longing for that dialogue to intensify into a more personalized drama from time to time. However impressive the discipline, the durability of art depends on how much and what kind of instinct for communication is submitting to that discipline. Even string quartets cannot live by counterpoint alone.
Still, what you retain from this music is its utterly unaffected directness. Its inventiveness keeps your ears constantly on their toes, so to speak. It may never quite surprise, or transcend or illuminate in the way that the great modern quartet-cycles (Bartok, Britten, Shostakovich and Tippett) do; but it is satisfying and invigorating, and the Hanson Quartet are dedicated exponents, while the recording is as clean and natural as the playing. I for one will be eagerly anticipating the next instalment.'