• Hugh Wood
  • String Quartet No. 4 (1993)

  • Chester Music Ltd (World)

Commissioned by the BBC, written for the Chilingirian String Quartet

  • 2vn.va.vc
  • 25 min

Programme Note

1. Introduzione
2. Scherzo
3. Adagio molto semplice
4. Finale

In my Second and Third Quartets I attempted sectional, agglutinative forms: in my Fourth I return to the conventional four movement form of my First Quartet of 1962. Both works build up (as in the 19th century symphony) to the Finale, thus making it the most substantial movement, which provides a climax to the work. The First Movement has, in both works, only the status of an Introduction.
But there the consciously willed resemblances end. This Introduction follows the Second Quartet to a certain extent, in that it provides a sort of ‘cauldron’, from which elements to be used later can all be plucked. Its opening will reappear at various points throughout the work, most completely at a climatic point of the Finale (bar 110). Subsequent material will be more fully worked out in the second movement, a large Scherzo. The Introduction concludes with an unusually placed violin cadenza (itself a rare feature in a string quartet, the idea lifted from Elliott Carter’s First Quartet) of which the opening is to reappear halfway through the Finale.
The Scherzo (which follows attacca) does not have at its centre a discretely characterized Trio: a figure in double-stops like a distant fanfare supplies the necessary contrast of a second idea. The Slow Movement has a secondary idea first heard on the cello and marked appassionato: an agitato middle section recalls the opening of the work, but in a formulation which will be found closely to anticipate its reappearance in the Finale.
The Finale is planned on a broad scale. Only after a fully worked exposition of both primary and secondary material does the opening of the whole work return, now in a greatly extended form. Then, at bar 140, the tune of the violin cadenza is first harmonized in fanfare style on the upper instruments, then presented as a chorale on the lower ones, with a rushing semiquaver accompaniment above. This climatic activity mounts to the very end.

The work is dedicated to the Chilingirian Quartet, old friends over many years.

Hugh Wood

Reviews

Wood's Fourth String Quartet, completed in 1993, does indeed take its lead from Schoenberg, its opening calling to mind that of the latter's Third String Quartet, but the theme also bears similarities in its use of the upbeat to Debussy's own work in the form.
Ben Hogwood, www.classicalsource.com
20th August 2012
A masterly piece...True chamber music of great distinction.
EDITOR'S CHOICE
Gramophone
1st June 1995

Discography

String Quartets Nos. 1-4

String Quartets Nos. 1-4
  • Label
    Conifer
  • Catalogue Number
    75605 51239-2
  • Ensemble
    Chilingirian String Quartet
  • Released
    1995