String Quartet (2012)

I will go further, and suggest that Brian Elias's String Quartet (2012) is a gem that should be in the repertoire of every British quartet. (Heath, Tippett, Villiers: take notice!) The Quartet is a tour de force of compositional ingenuity, its opening movement a concise, cleverly constructed set of double variations on a chromatic theme (using all 12 notes of the scale) and a second subject initially intoned by the viola. Elements of these are then workd through in the remaining three movements; the third span is a compellingly spectral scherzo.

...the work finds Elias inside the motor of the genre, playing with motif, development and variation in four continuous, interconnected movements. Most striking are the two inner sections – the Adagio a glassy surface over tectonic shiftings, the Scherzo a flickering shadow-play of pianissimo semiquavers....