From Birmingham
THE PHILHARMONIC STRING
QUARTET:
PAUL BEARD (First Violin), HAROLD MILLS
, FRANK VENTON (Viola),
HERBERT STEPHEN (Violoncello)
FRANCK began to sketch out this work, his only Quartet, when he was sixty-seven
(in the year before his death). It is in four Movements.
The First MOVEMENT is built on somewhat uncommon lines. The opening slow theme is, as it were, a germ of the whole work. After the first section we have, in quick time, an exposition of the usual two Main Tunes, one in a minor key and the other, in the major, beginning sweetly and softly in the First Violin, some little time afterwards. These ideas are joined together by a ' Cello theme which is accompanied by the other Strings in a tremolo. This 'Cello ' link ' comes again in the last Movement.
After these two Main Tunes have been thus expounded, the theme of the opening slow section reappears (on the Viola), and is treated in fugal style. Then the quicker speed is resumed for a time, and the two Main Tunes are developed a little and restated ; the opening slow theme of the Movement brings it to an end in perfect restfulness.
The SECOND MOVEMENT is a Scherzo, of great delicacy and fine imagination, played on muted Strings.
The THIRD MOVEMENT (Slowish) is in the composer's favourite key of B, and has all his elevation and nobility of feeling.
The FOURTH MOVEMENT brings in, at the beginning, themes heard earlier in the work.
Of the two Main Tunes of the Movement one, heard on the Viola against a very soft accompaniment, is derived from the theme with which the Quartet began, and the Second is in several sections, one part of which has affinity with the 'Cello ' link ' between the First Movement's two Tunes.
Near the end of the work Franck recalls first the rhythm of the Scherzo and then (in a broadened form on the First Violin) the lovely melody of the Slow Movement.