Lawrence Rose (b. 1943)
Danses pour Quatuor, Op. 5 (2007, rev. 2024)
String Quartet No. 4, Op. 33 (2024)
Tippett Quartet
rec. 2024, All Saint’s Church, East Finchley, London, UK
Convivium Records CR108 [68]

Lawrence Rose played the violin as a child and was already interested in composition. He worked as a lawyer until 2001, before turning to composition full time. His catalogue of works is impressive, with five symphonies and three violin concertos amongst other large-scale pieces. Here we have two works for string quartet, one newly completed and the other a revised version of an earlier work.

Taking the CD out of its transparent tray reveals the opening five bars of the major work on the disc, the String Quartet No. 4. One sees straight away that there is a key signature, two sharps, which rather leads the uninformed listener such as I to expect music in a tonal style. With the opening of Danses pour Quatuor, however, we hear that this is only partly the case.

The composer, writing in the booklet, opines that old and established forms have still much to offer contemporary composers and listeners. Danses pour Quatuor – nowhere in the documentation are we told why the title is in French – is a suite of dances that, on the surface, would seem to follow the baroque tradition. There are five dances, a rigaudon, a sarabande, a waltz, a tango and a foxtrot. These are followed by a closing movement to which the composer has given the title ‘Invention’. Three of the dances have a kind of subtitle that widens the nature of the piece: the tango movement, for instance, has the qualification ‘quasi habanera’. The composer’s notes touch on the Baroque aspects of the work’s form, whilst acknowledging that the dances included originate from very different historical periods. The style of the music, however, the composer’s musical vocabulary, remains consistent throughout the six movements. Having spotted that fragment of score, the opening of ‘Rigaudon’ comes as a surprise, as there is no discernible key, at least not at the outset. There are, throughout the work, passages of tonal writing, but they are mainly brief. In the ‘Tango’, for instance, the two violins play a parallel melody, a most attractive device that strongly evokes the dance of the title. This occurs over an insistent rhythmic accompaniment, and indeed rhythmic drive is an important element of the music throughout the work. This is usually regular – these are dances, after all – but the pulse in the closing ‘Invention’ is anything but. Another characteristic is that much of the music, for the violins in particular, is placed in the upper registers. Rose provides a listening guide to each dance, an almost blow-by-blow account, but much of it is highly technical and of limited use to a first-time listener. He gets the reader into a terrible muddle about the variations that make up the ‘Sarabanda’, for instance, and only after several hearings am I able to identify them, and even then not with any certainty. When he keeps it simple we find our way much more easily. He points out the hesitant gentleness that ends the ‘Walzer’, for instance, as well as the way the ‘Tango’ stops almost in mid-breath. These are attractive features of a work that can seem dry at first hearing but which, like most music, reveals more of itself to listeners willing to put in the work.

The String Quartet No. 4 is a large-scale five-movement structure that runs for some 36 minutes. The composer describes the shape of the work as ‘arch-like…as sometimes favoured by Bartók’. The second and fourth movements are scherzos, and it is here that most of the fast music is to be heard. The central movement is a lengthy Adagio and the two outer movements contain much music marked Andante or Moderato. Once again the composer’s listening guide is purely factual, presenting a detailed series of events. This frequently flirts with analytical thesis, such as the description of the fugal writing in the finale. If I understand it correctly, the thematic point of departure is generally a short motif, of four notes, for example, which is then subjected to extensive development and expansion. Melodic writing is not really a feature. The composer gives no indication of what, if anything, he is trying to express. Instead he writes that ‘this is absolute music the essence of which is organic growth through development or transformation’. The problem is, once again, that much of this is difficult or impossible to hear on a first audition, and is in any case of limited use or interest to listeners other than those familiar with the techniques described. The work is clearly intended to be a serious study in string quartet writing, and the medium is ably exploited. The music is highly chromatic, and passages where the listener is able to discern a key centre are rare and fleeting. Emotional aridity is again what comes over on a first hearing, but repeated listening reveals passages of real beauty, particularly in the slow movement. This is not easy music and listeners who stick with it will get the most out of it.

The Tippett Quartet’s playing of these challenging works is beyond praise. I feel sure the composer will be satisfied and profoundly grateful. They have been expertly recorded by engineer Adaq Khan and producer James Unwin.

William Hedley

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