Beauty Veil’d
Marie Dare (1902-1976)
Phantasy Quintet (1933-34)
Dorothy Howell (1898-1982)
Adagio and Caprice (1955)
String Quartet in D minor (1933)
Tobias Matthay (1858-1945)
Piano Quartet in One Movement, Op.20 (1882 rev. 1905)
John Blackwood McEwen (1868-1948)
Nugae, seven Bagatelles for string quartet (1912)
The Berkeley Ensemble with Simon Callaghan (piano) and Tom Wraith (cello)
rec. August 2024, St John The Evangelist, Oxford
EM Records EMR CD091 [58]

When I mentioned Marie Dare’s unrecorded Quartets and Quintets two years ago in a review of British cello music, little did I know that EM Records would so soon after give us the premiere recording of her Phantasy Quintet of 1933-34. It heads a programme of Cobbett Prize era, though not necessarily Cobbett-inspired, works for quartet, quintet (both cello quintet and piano quintet) and the odd (wo)man out, a solitary work for violin and piano.

Though it wasn’t composed for the Cobbett chamber competition, Dare’s Quintet, written for string quartet and extra cello, is clearly predicated on the model being, at under eleven minutes, just under the stipulated length. This is a well laid-out sectional work that admits brief gusts of folklore but which otherwise maintains a rich, romantic feel, the resonant lyricism of which is bolstered by the extra cello. At 9:45 she introduces a light-hearted frolicsome feel to balance an earlier brief folklike foray, the work ending in pure elegance. This is a most attractive work, played with requisite warmth by the Berkeley Ensemble.  

Recordings of the orchestral music, in particular, of Dorothy Howell have brought her some welcome recognition. The two works here were composed a generation apart. The String Quartet in D minor of 1933 lasts a compact nine minutes and has been edited for performance by the Berkeley Ensemble’s violist, Dan Shilladay. The score lacked dynamic markings, but these have been provided by the ensemble. Though it’s contemporary with Dare’s Quintet, Howell’s textures are much sparer and her musical manner is less oriented to the romantic. Whilst hardly austere – it actually generates increasingly playful moments – it’s a more obviously refined work, though not necessarily a more attractive one. Her Adagio and Caprice for violin and piano dates from 1955. It has some drifting rather inconclusive harmonies in its opening section but takes off with the Caprice – engaging, lively and idiomatically written.

I’ve come across examples of Tobias Matthay’s recordings as a pianist but before now, I’d never heard any of his music which makes his big-boned, somewhat Brahmsian Piano Quartet in one movement of 1882 (though revised in 1905) so interesting. Simon Callaghan is the adept pianist. There’s a youthful grandiloquence to the writing in what is, by far, the most extrovert work in the programme. Though Matthay does introduce winsome material as contrast, the overall impression is one of stormy volatility and thematically attractive writing that still manages to be concise. It doesn’t breach the 13-minute mark and closes with renewed brio. Matthay was only 24 when he wrote this impressive work.

The programme ends with John Blackwood McEwen’s Nugae, seven bagatelles for string quartet written in 1912. A number of his quartets have been recorded on Chandos but there’s a lot more to be done for his chamber music. Cast in a suite-style, the pieces are necessarily brief but always tangy – charming and pert (March of the Little Folk), warmly textured (Peet Reek), slower and more quizzical writing surrounding a zesty dance (Humoresque), evocative mood painting (The Dhu Loch) and a fiery finish in the Red Murdoch.

Everything here is a world premiere recording though the pedant in me – he’s very hard to keep under wraps – should offer one small footnote: though Nugae is a first recording of the whole set, The Dhu Loch has been recorded before, by the London String Quartet back in 1923 in New York. 

The ensemble with colleagues Callaghan and cellist Tom Wraith in the Dare Double Cello Quintet prove admirable ambassadors for this music. They’ve been very well recorded and, as ever, the EM documentation is first-class.       

Jonathan Woolf

Other review: Nick Barnard