Music at Paxton-Glass, Shostakovich, Ravel

Music at Paxton Paxton House 22/7/25

Carducci String Quartet: Matthew Denton violin, Michelle Fleming violin, Eoin Schmidt-Martin viola, Emma Denton cello

Today’s twentieth century programme from the Carducci Quartet is very different from yesterday’s concert from the Consone Quartet, but it’s an equally compelling performance. Played in reverse chronological order of composition, it’s interesting to see the links and possible influences from one style of music to another, and sometimes these are not quite what we expected them to be.

The first half of the concert features works by Philip Glass and Shostakovich, both composers whom the Quartet know well: their recording of the Glass String Quartets for Naxos has had 21 million plays on Spotify, and in 2016 they won a Royal Philharmonia Award for their project Shostakovich15, a cycle of Shostakovich quartets performed across the UK, North and South America. They begin with Glass’s String Quartet No 3 ‘Mishima’. Much of the music is taken from his film score to the 1985 Schrader film ‘Mishima. a Life in Four Chapters’, in which he used string quartet music for the more personal sections of the film. The six short movements are not a consecutive programme, but are, rather, a kind of commentary on the right-wing author’s life. The first and last movements are classic Glass, repeated arpeggios over longer notes which develop into short melodic phrases.  The music is beautifully harmonised, and the group sway along with the pulse, as can been seen clearly in the YouTube film of them playing the final movement.  Mishima’s death by suicide after his supporters’ failed rebellion forms the subject of the slower tragic second movement, while the syncopated rhythms and increasing volume of the third movement recalls his grandmother’s harsh treatment of him as a child, although there’s some humour too in the witty and precise playing. The pressure Mishima put on himself is the source for the energetic fourth movement with the first violin’s vigorous arm movements mimicking the author’s strenuous exercise regime of weight training. ‘Blood Oath’, the fifth movement about the cult’s vow to fight to the death contains faster and more discordant music, with arpeggios punctuated by loud dissonant chords, before a final sense of harmony and reflection in the last movement, which played over the film’s credits.  I followed the work using the programme notes, and I wonder what I would have made of it without them. Certainly the outer movements have the immediate appeal I find in a lot of Glass’s music, although I might not have expected the more energetic and violent music. I may join the 21 million and hear more of the Carducci’s Glass on Spotify!

In the 50th anniversary of his death, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No 8 in C Minor might seem more familiar territory, and his ability to write in a moving fashion never fails to have an emotional impact. He wrote it in 1960 while on a visit to Dresden to work on a film about the city’s devastation by bombing. The five movement Quartet, composed in just three days, has the dedication. “To the memory of the victims of fascism and of this war.” That account of the work’s genesis has been challenged by the letter he wrote to a friend, about what he calls his “ideologically flawed composition” which he claims is about himself, and brought him to tears while writing it. But the main reason for accepting it as autobiographical work is the music itself with its recurring use of his four-note signature DSCH (D, Eflat, C and B in the German notation). The work begins with the four notes passed around the players in a solemn chorale, marked largo with a tragic solo for first violin is picked up by the other upper strings. The work runs without a break, so the changes of mood are abrupt, and we’re suddenly rushed into the harsh dissonances and fury of the allegro molto second movement, the energetic bowing of all four players seeming unrelenting, and the four note DSCH slipped in again as the movement quietens towards the end.

The third movement allegretto is a delicate waltz played on the first violin, although it soon competes with discordance and shrillness, until out of nowhere comes a brief lyrical cello melody accompanied by quiet higher strings.  A cello melody heralds the fourth movement, another largo disrupted by thrice repeated chords from the other players. The melody which later emerges is a love song from ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’, powerfully poignant whether describing individual or collective grief. The three chord interruptions return with vigour until a cello solo leads us into the fifth movement also marked largo. Again the quartet plays a solemn chorale, which dies away, leaving the final repetitions of DSCH. A moving  performance of great conviction.

We move back more than half a century to Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F written, as first violin Matthew Denton tells us, in 1902-1903 as a competition piece for the Prix de Rome.  Still in his twenties he was considered a likely winner especially as his teacher, Gabriel Faurė was on the judging panel.  Surprisingly Ravel lost because Faurė disliked the last movement – though he later admitted, “I could have been wrong”. Debussy admired the quartet, and Matthew Denton says that listening to it is “like jumping into an impressionist painting.”

The first allegro moderato is also marked très doux, and although the main theme includes  soft and sweet sections, these are often broken up by harsher chords, and which later build to a high-pitched crescendo. The second movement scherzo is a popular radio excerpt. With its off-beat opening, everyone playing enthusiastic pizzicato, it’s a sharply focused and witty movement, with a slow elegant dance section holding back the rhythmic power only briefly. In contrast the trop lent start to the third movement is introspective. But if we’re in danger of giving in to the lovely viola melody which ends the movement, we’re rudely awakened by the start of the fifth movement.  The finale, vif et agitė might according to Matthew Denton provide the score for a Hitchcock movie. A complex creation which picks up musically phrases from the earlier movements, its rough-edged interventions and sudden loud chords surely reminds us of the similar outbursts in both of tonight’s earlier quartets.

 The forceful conclusion is met with much applause and there is an encore. Viola player Eoin Schmidt-Martin introduces the Carducci Quartet’s arrangement of Irish folk band, The Gloaming’s work, ‘The Lobster’. He says he has a folk music background and admired his grandfather’s fiddle playing so much that he asked for a violin for his third birthday.  His disappointment that it didn’t play itself may have led to his chosen career as a viola player. ‘The Lobster’ is a series of Irish dance tunes, starting with delicacy and increasing in speed to reach a breath-taking finish five minutes later.

Footnote: I admired the Quartet’s period instruments, though enquiry revealed they have steel, not gut, strings. A recent article in ‘Gramophone’ gives details about their decision to change the group’s instruments, with a view to providing four that worked well together.  Their Paxton audience will surely confirm that is the case!  

photo credit Tom Barnes

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