Tippett: String Quartets Nos. 1-4

“The Britten Quartet are incisive and assured in negotiating the diffuse aesthetic scope of Tippett's fascinating String Quartets. If only they had more of his humanity and sense of fun.” --BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2012 ***

Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998) was a leading figure in British contemporary music of the 20-th century. His 4 string quartets span his entire creative life, and show him as an extremely skilful and innovative composer. In his String Quartets, the most challenging and complicated musical form, Tippett draws inspiration from the late quartets of Beethoven, particularly in his fugal writing, and the intricate and complex textures of the 4 voices. 

 

The Britten Quartet already showed their special qualities in British 20th century music, their recording of the String Quartets of Benjamin Britten (Brilliant Classics 9168) won high praise.

Sir Michael Tippett (1905–98) wrote a total of seven string quartets, along with two early efforts that he himself suppressed, deeming the works too immature. Like the symphonies, the Quartets Nos. 1– 4, heard on this disc, span Tippett’s development as a composer, and reveal his deep feeling and skill for contrapuntal music. Drawing particular inspiration from Beethoven, who Tippett held a great admiration for, the quartets display a rigorous intellectual logic and stylistic features that bear the hallmarks of Beethoven’s late style. In String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3, for example, Tippett places particular prominence on fugal writing, Nos. 1 and 2 display hints of sonata form, while String Quartet No.4 is a multi-movement work -– four movements played without a break.

Yet despite Tippett’s sources of inspiration, these works are also testament to his fundamentally innovative approach to composition, heard in the complex and intricate combinations of rhythms, structural experimentation and assured manipulation of string sonorities.

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Tippett: The complete music for piano

“This splendid double album… assembles all Tippett's music for piano whether solo of with orchestra, in performances that impressively set new standards in these often challenging works.” --BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 *****

“Most powerful of all is the mighty Concerto… the eloquence and fantasy of what is undoubtedly one of the major works of the 1950s is superbly projected in a performance which need fear no comparison with the best earlier recordings… As for the sonatas, Steven Osborne is at least the equal of Paul Crossley... in interpretative empathy, and has the advantage of superlative modern recording.” --Gramophone, December 2007

“The young Tippett – magpie and maverick – sought maximum intensity of feeling while shunning what he felt to be the sentimental fervour of Elgar, Bax and Walton. Equally abhorrent were the pastoral pieties of Vaughan Williams. Tippett took his stand with Blake and Yeats rather than Bunyan, and a Blake whose 'bow of burning gold' required something altogether less complacent than Parry's well upholstered jingoism.

The results are plain to hear in Tippett's earliest works for piano, the First Sonata and the Handel Fantasia. The slow movement of the sonata may flirt briefly with Hindemith-style counterpoint but the predominant spirit is fiery and spontaneous, with a reinvigorated romanticism embracing those aspects of popular music which Tippett believed to have 'classical' potential.
The road ahead was bumpy and he occasionally lost his way, as in the very long slow movement of the Third Sonata, aspiring to Beethovenian depth but bogged down in overly dense textures. There are also several repetitions too many in the Fourth Sonata, though the final movement's gently poetic sense of resignation more than compensates.

Most powerful of all is the mighty Concerto, starkly and confidently poised between Tippett's still richly potent earlier style and the brave new possibilities explored in its visionary central movement. This recording blends the piano in with the orchestra, acknowledging the work's symphonic attributes, and there is a certain recessed quality to the sound of the piece throughout. Nevertheless, the eloquence and fantasy of what is undoubtedly one of the major works of the 1950s is superbly projected in a performance which need fear no comparison with the best earlier recordings. As for the sonatas, Steven Osborne is at least the equal of Paul Crossley (CRD) in interpretative empathy, and has the advantage of superlative modern recording.

There's a further advantage: perceptive and lucid booklet-notes by Ian Kemp, Tippett's friend and biographer, and one of Osborne's mentors. The set is dedicated to him.” -- The Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010

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