It was very astute of the Finzi Trust to have commissioned a string quartet from Michael Berkeley to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary, in 1981, of the death of Gerald Finzi, and the juxtaposition of the two composers' music on this generously filled record (it plays for just a few seconds short of 70 minutes) is just as shrewd. It makes the affinities between them quite obvious (both fundamentally melodists; both of them audibly and consciously part of a specifically English 'school', though to very different phases of it), but the record also demonstrates what strength and darkness that essentially lyrical tradition is capable of, and what imaginative span.
The two Finzi pieces will surprise anyone who has already classified him as a charming but slight miniaturist. One does not expect to find a miniaturist writing such an assured and cogent fugue as this one, and the deceptively titled Interlude, in particular, has passion, vigour and an almost orchestral sonority alongside the characteristic shadowed lyrical grace. It also has an inventive urgency that holds the attention firmly throughout its 12 minutes.
Berkeley's Quartet is twice as long and more than twice as risky in its use of a complex structure that unfolds unhurriedly—'rhapsodically', one might say on first acquaintance. Yet again the ideas are so striking and characterful that the listener is gripped immediately (there is, for example, an insouciant but sinister dance-music element whose final manifestation is as a slow, apparently luscious waltz; yet to describe how that lusciousness abruptly but inevitably curdles would be like giving away the end of a good detective story) and a second hearing begins to reveal how cunningly organized and logical the piece is. The influences (Bartok and Shostakovich as well as Britten and a trace or two of Walton) are fully absorbed into a style which is authentically personal, the essential lyricism flowing all the more freely for the taut control that directs it. The other two Berkeley pieces are earlier, but they already show that style emerging: the fertile melodic inventiveness in the Three Moods (a taxing assignment to write a nine-minute work for solo oboe) and the finding of ways to make every note of a melody work for its living in the Trio. And already, as in the Quartet, there are memorable inventions that gain strength from the discipline with which they are worked: the ingenious uses to which a simple scale can be put in the first movement of the Trio, the graceful berceuse that underlies the spare, purposeful energy of its second.
Berkeley has been fortunate in the number of his works that have been recently recorded, but it is this coupling that most satisfying and convincingly demonstrates his stature. All the performances have a quality that suggests prolonged acquaintance with the music, and all are admirably recorded.'