The Reginald Paul Pianoforte
Quartet:
Carl Taylor (violin)
Watson Forbes (viola)
John Moore (violoncello)
Reginald Paul (pianoforte)
Quartet in B minor (unfinished)
Lekeu
1 Dans un emportement douloureux (tres anime). 2 Lent et Passionne
Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894), on* of Franck's most brilliant pupils, was a Belgian like his master. His untimely death cut short his work on this quartet, beside which the well-known Violin Sonata was (in his own words) to be ' but a penny toy '.
' The subject of the first movement ', he wrote, ' is bitter, convulsive sorrow, softened now and again into passionate melancholy. But, as the second movement is to indicate Love as the source of this sorrow, I am forced, while working at the first movement, to keep the second clearly before me, and to weave my themes and patterns so that they may be completely unified with those to follow later.'
In 1893 he wrote to Ysaye: 'I can tell you that my interminable quartet is growing ; in a week the first movement will be finished. I have done my best to set down in it my dream of the keenest, the most sacred grief and passion..... The second movement is to be at once a nocturne and a love-scene.' But he never finished that love-scene; it was left for Vincent d'Indy to complete his comrade's swan song.
Quartet in E flat, Op. 87 Dvorak
1 Allegro con fuoco. 2 Lento. 3 Allegro moderato, grazioso. 4 Allegro ma non troppo