MARCIA VAN Dresser
THE ENTENTE STRING Quartet
CECIL BONVALOT ( Violin) ;DOROTHY CHURTON (Violin); JAMES LOCKYER (Viola);
EDITH CHURTON (Violoncello)
IT is not easy to describe in words, as a listener recently asked the B.B.C. to do, what is meant by ' Romantic ' music. To any who listens attentively, Schumann's music itself answers the question much better than words could do, and nowhere more convincingly than in the string quartets. They are full, even fuller than most of Schumann's music, of those poetic qualities for which no better term could easily be found than ' Romantic' and they had a good deal to do with enhancing his reputation when they appeared in 1842, as practically his first essay in writing chamber music. They were clearly composed under genuine impulse ; all three, were written within a month, and the last two movements of the third occupied Schumann only one day each. They are dedicated to Mendelssohn, and the Leipzig world of music took them up with enthusiasm.