Villiers Quartet - String Quartets - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

William Alwyn's musical style is in the main of a romantic nature firmly grounded in tonality, notwithstanding some forays into modernity, calling on dissonance and freedom of form when he felt the need. This approach can be keenly felt in the works included on this album, all of which were completed when he was aged between eighteen and twenty-five. The medium of the string quartet held a long and lasting fascination for Alwyn, which began during the earliest years of his composing career. He was to compose a total of sixteen string quartets between the years 1920 and 1984. Alwyn considered that the string quartet was the 'most intimate of mediums' and reveled in the challenge to provide interesting material in which to balance the four instruments. The sixteen string quartets that he was to compose can be divided into two groups; the first thirteen quartets were composed between 1920 and 1936, and the last three quartets were composed between 1953 and 1984. Album Tracks 1. String Quartet No. 7 in a (1929) 2. String Quartet No. 6 in E minor (1929) 3. String Quartet No. 8 in D minor (1931) 4. Seven Irish Tunes for String Quartet 5. String Quartet No. 9 in One Movement

Benefitting from the afterglow of the 1949 Koussevitzky Prize for his First Symphony, Peter Racine Fricker's original and striking First Quartet was premiered later that year to international acclaim. The Second Quartet shares a formal clarity and kinship with the tonality heard in the First, but evolving in range, technique and eloquence of expression. The symmetrical Third Quartet with it's intricate variations is finely crafted in the serial style of Fricker's later music. Album Tracks 1. I. Adagio Appassionato - Con Brio - Meno Mosso - Adagio Ma Liberamente - Con Brio - Meno Mosso Tranquillamente - Vivo 2. I. Inquieto Allegro 3. II. Molto Allegro 4. III. Adagio 5. I. Presto - Poco Meno Mosso 6. II. Allegro Feroce 7. III. Adagio 8. IV. Allegro Inquieto 9. V. Presto - Variations 1-8 - Coda Piu Presto 10. I. Adagio 11. II. Scherzo (Allegro)

Album Tracks 1. Adagio - Allegretto Seriouso 2. Allegretto Giocondo 3. Tempo Di Marcia Quasi Passacaglia 4. Allegro Risoluto 5. Molto Adagio Molto Legato 6. Allegro Vivo 7. Allegro Marcato 8. Adagio Sostenuto 9. Allegro Pressante 10. Tempo Di Marcia 11. Allegro Agitato 12. Poco Lento 13. Tempo Di Marcia 14. Angoscioso