Arwel Hughes (1909-1988)
String Quartet No.1 (1948)
String Quartet No.2 (1976)
String Quartet No.3 (1983)
Maggini Quartet
rec. 2021, St Peter’s Church, Boughton Monchelsea, UK
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
Meridian CDE84664 [64]
My first thought when I first looked at this fabulous new recording from the Maggini Quartet was: do they mean Owain Arwel Hughes? My second was: I didn’t know he composed! A quick glance at the composition dates of the pieces revealed that it couldn’t be that distinguished conductor but in fact his father. Arwel Hughes appears to have had a fine career promoting the cause of Welsh music but however well-known he may have been in the Principality, he is new to me. As these wonderful quartets reveal, this is very much my loss.
I can’t be the only one to have marvelled at tales of visitors turning up peerless masterpieces such as Schubert’s Great C major symphonies hidden amongst piles of papers. Obviously, these quartets aren’t quite at that exalted Schubertian level. I didn’t really think such things still happened but, in the case of these three quartets, I would be wrong. Whilst they weren’t quite discovered in a dusty drawer, their origins are unknown. No mention is made of whether or not they were ever performed in the liner notes and these are all first recordings.
If the history of these works starts in misfortune, their luck has clearly turned in ending up in the hands of the Maggini Quartet. Not only that, Meridian have rolled out the audio red carpet in giving them uncannily present sound – some of the best I have heard of any string quartet. The documentation is by definition scanty and focuses on the technical aspects of the music. Fine though Rhiannon Mathias’s notes are, I feel they sell the visceral impact of the music a little short.
Two aspects of this music need to be borne in mind. The first is that far from being the worthy hackwork of a middle of the road kapellmeister, they show evidence that Hughes had kept up with all the latest developments in music and, perhaps liberated by the more private string quartet genre, wasn’t afraid to explore them in order to discover what might be of use in writing his own music.
The second is that, even though we know next to nothing about the circumstances of their composition, all three quartets are deeply personal and couldn’t be further from any kind of intellectual exercise.
The first quartet, written in 1948, already shows a composer both up to speed with latest trends (it stands comparison with Britten’s strangely not dissimilar first quartet) but imitating no one. From the first note, we get a sense of Hughes’ highly distinctive, piquant harmonic style. Try the main melody of the finale of the first quartet. I haven’t yet made the acquaintance of the few of his larger scale works that have made it on to record so I can’t comment on whether this is typical of him or just these quartets. That harmonic sense isn’t just a means of spicing things up. Hughes puts it to great emotional use too. In the two later quartets this tendency becomes both more structurally significant and much more intensely emotional.
Right from the perky, almost Shostakovich-like opening bars, it is obvious that this is much more than just another worthy British string quartet that merits dusting off once in a while out of curiosity. From those opening gestures, Hughes’ invention is off and running, exploring and reinventing as it goes. The second subject group brings our first encounter with the aching, keening nature of Hughes’ lyrical writing. This first movement works this material up to powerful climax before an ‘is it? Isn’t it?” recapitulation rounded off with a Haydnesque witty payoff at the movement’s end. The middle movement sets off as a singing slow movement but the energy that romps through the entire work will not be contained. The finale reverses the trick, starting with the melodic equivalent of sweet and sour before settling into an affecting slow middle section that as much anything in the quartet serves as a true slow movement. Everything is handled with the lightness of touch too often missing from the tweed jacket with leather elbow patches that sometimes afflicts British music during this era.
I imagine the members of the Maggini Quartet at the first play through smiling at one another as if to say, “This is good!”
If the first quartet plays Haydnesque games masking a deeper core, that more serious side is immediately apparent in the slowly unwinding, sad melody with which the second quartet opens. Almost all the subsequent material derives from this opening but Hughes conceals his art masterfully. This is quartet writing of the highest calibre. The tangy harmonies now ache like emotional bruises. Hushed, quieter sections hint at deeper pain whilst the irrepressible energy of the first quartet drives on the tragedy. Technical mastery, deep feeling and stunning innovation- when the movement came to an end with a brutal gesture of dismissal I was left breathless!
The third quartet is, in my opinion, first amongst equals which means that it is a tour de force. Hughes had clearly not only been listening to the Bartók quartets but had fully absorbed them into his musical bloodstream. Likewise, there are elements of twelve tone but defiantly on his own terms. Indeed, that aspect of the music seems like a logical extension of his characteristic bracing sense of harmony rather than any attempt at following fashion. It sounds like the music of a man unencumbered and letting his imagination go where it will.
The third quartet is a more otherworldly creation. It hints where the other two declaim. At one point in the final movement there is a near quotation from Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge which reflects a sense of this quartet as some kind of testament. If the tone is less energetic, there is no flagging of imagination. I couldn’t help but think of Robert Simpson similarly writing away out of some powerful inner compulsion whilst exiled at the fringes of musical taste.
This record ought to be a near mandatory purchase for those who love British music but I really believe its scope goes beyond the parochial. When music, performance and production values align so immaculately then the only possible instruction is: enjoy!
David McDade
Availability: Meridian
