- Bernard Herrmann
Echoes for String Quartet (1965)
- Novello & Co Ltd (World)
Programme Note
Prelude - Valse lente - Elegy - Scherzo - Nocturne - Habanera - Scherzo macabre - Pastorale - Allegro - Epilogue
Echoes was composed in 1965 and received its first performance at a Redcliffe Concert by the Amici Quartet in December 1966. It is an elegiac work of immediate melodic appeal. Its romantic style might be slightly eclectic but its lack of aggressive 'modernity' produces that rare thing, an extended twentieth-century piece of expressive writing which has at least one theme to haunt the memory afterwards. The structure is kept together by this most memorable phrase which serves as an interlude between the eight sub-sections. Not all the music is slow; there is, for instance, a highly effective Scherzo macabre.
Echoes was composed in 1965 and received its first performance at a Redcliffe Concert by the Amici Quartet in December 1966. It is an elegiac work of immediate melodic appeal. Its romantic style might be slightly eclectic but its lack of aggressive 'modernity' produces that rare thing, an extended twentieth-century piece of expressive writing which has at least one theme to haunt the memory afterwards. The structure is kept together by this most memorable phrase which serves as an interlude between the eight sub-sections. Not all the music is slow; there is, for instance, a highly effective Scherzo macabre.
Media
Bernard Herrmann: Echoes