# Rubbra - String Quartet 3 op.112 (SQ review)



## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Rubbra completed his 3rd String Quartet in 1963 under a commission from the Allegri Quartet, who gave the first performance of the piece at the 1964 Cheltenham Festival. The quartet was written during a time of "immense personal changes" for Rubbra (I have no idea what these were but after reading plenty about him it probably had something to do with his love life). There is certainly a nervous agitation and some solemnity in the music of the 3rd quartet. 
Rubbra cryptically stayed at the time that "Song is the leap of mind in the eternal breaking-out into sound.... Song, lyrical song, is indeed the motivating force of this work" but there is no other mention of this and there is nothing in the score to reinforce these comments. Some believe that Rubbra was influenced by the recent completion of Lauda Sion, a choral setting of an Aquinas text, for the BBC and others believe that it's about his personal life but who knows (and does it matter)? 
The first movement begins as a largo which Rubbra explained "contains in the first eight bars three melodic intervals and two keys which vitalise the whole work. The former are the semitone, the fourth and the fifth, and the latter the keys of D flat major and C major." (yep, that went right over my head but I thought was important to include here). However, reading more there's evidence that Rubbra is "searching for a home key" which makes more sense to me and would explain the dramatic nature of this fine movement as the music changes in character and metre even after he changes from largo to allegretto. The 2nd movement is a noble adagio where again the harmonic probing continues as if looking for an answer. It's a movement that speaks to me of loneliness and melancholy (just my interpretation). The 3rd movement Allegro leggiero is much brighter in nature as if the answer has arrived. Its high-spirited, giddy agitation with tender pizzicati has a nervous enthusiasm and positivity to it. Incidentally, the three movements are interlinked, with no firm 'break' in the music (unless the performers decide upon one or put in during the recording process). Only three recordings so this won't take long. 

I've had the *Sterling* set of the Rubbra quartets for years. They play with plenty of commitment but there's just not the quality of the opposition as regards texture and dynamics. Still a perfectly enjoyable, recommendable recording but not of the standard below. 
What you're basically left with is a straight shoot-out between the Dante and Maggini performances and tbh there's very little in it. 
The *Dante Quartet *reading is one of brooding introspection. It's an intense, lyrical and darker performance of real depth, with an excellent first movement, and were it not for another better overall performance this would be an easy first choice. 
However, the *Maggini Quartet* produce an account of equal intensity but this time they are more forceful, propulsive and immediate. Naxos provide an ideal sound to capture the Maggini's greater spontaneity and although honours are fairly even in the first two movements the Naxos recording takes the final movement hands-down. Textures and phrasing are ideal, rhythms are sprung perfectly, lines are clear and pizzicati are clean and tight. It's small margins but the Maggini performance shades it for for me but I could easily understand anyone who prefers the Dante approach. Even so the Maggini performance is the one I return to the most.


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