Availability

Facsimile score 0-571-51032-9 and parts 0-571-55508-X (fp) on sale

Programme Notes

My second quartet originated with its slow last movement, Elegy, which I wrote in the spring of 1974 as a memorial piece for a friend who had been killed in the Paris air disaster a few weeks before. Two years later I decided to extend the piece and wrote a first movement and, after a further six month gap, a scherzo. The completed work was revised in the winter of 1979-80. The first movement is a very concise sonata allegro, classical in shape (Beethoven’s X D 95 was a conscious model). The scherzo middle movement is a study in motor rhythms, firmly – I might say obsessively – rooted in the tonality of C. The last movement has a straightforward ABABA form; the B sections (marked Spettrale) are transformations of the broad main melody.

© David Matthews

String Quartet No.2

No Venue (Halifax, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom)

Elysian Quartet

String Quartet No.2

University of York (York, United Kingdom)

Elysian Quartet

String Quartet No.2

Bishopsgate Institute (London, United Kingdom)

Elysian Quartet

String Quartet No.2

London School of Economics (London, United Kingdom)

Elysian Quartet

String Quartet No.2

Chapel Arts Centre (Stogumber, Somerset, United Kingdom)

Elysian Quartet