Boyle, Vaughan Williams, Moeran & Ireland

Album review

The four works offered here by the Piatti Quartet on its Rubicon label debut are all but unknown; even the Household Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, written during World War II for amateur performance, has been recorded only sparsely, and the String Quartet in E minor of Vaughan Williams' student Ina Boyle, having thus far been passed over in the general revival of music by women, here receives its world premiere. That strikingly passionate work may be the highlight here, and the Piatti Quartet does it justice, but consider also the Vaughan Williams pieces, which neatly fuse their derivation from Welsh hymn tunes with a three-movement Fantasia-Scherzo-Variations structure; the final variations are especially effective. All of the music is in the tonal and accessible Vaughan Williams vein, but all four works are distinctive. John Ireland's The Holy Boy is a transcription of a piano work by the composer; here, it serves the function of an intermezzo. The two-movement String Quartet No. 2 of E.J. Moeran was found among the composer's papers after his death, and it is uncertain when it was composed. The work makes use of folk music, but the flavor is quite different from Vaughan Williams' works of this type. The whole project suggests just how much English music of this period awaits rediscovery. The unidiomatic and rather cavernous church sound is about the only complaint on this delightful release.
© James Manheim /TiVo