South Florida Classical Review

The present offbeat Naxos disc of four American string quartets reflects the tenuous place the genre has had domestically, yet provides a worthy and well played program with one notable discovery.

It took Ralph Evans, first violinist of the Fine Arts Quartet, more than three decades to complete his String Quartet No. 1 (ambitiously numbered, considering the long gestation). The opening Moderato has an easy-going Delius-like English feel, turning more angular in the middle, though an overall amiability reigns. The Andante is an impassioned chromatic outpouring and the third movement offers a lightweight gamboling scherzo. Even with the emphatic closing chord, Evans’ quartet seems to need another movement, a finale with some ballast.

Philip Glass has completed five mature quartets, as well as his atmospheric quartet soundtrack for Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. The concise String Quartet No. 2 is adapted from music for a stage version of Beckett’s Company and the four movements run less than nine minutes with a characteristic mix of yearning lyric phrases against pulsing minimalist rhythms.

Most substantial are the other two works. George Antheil’s String Quartet No. 3, written in 1948, dates from the composer’s conservative late years when he had put aside the anarchic outrages of his “bad boy of music” youth. Still, it’s hard to believe this retro-conservative work came from the same pen that produced Ballet mecanique. There’s a strong flavor of 19th-century American folksong in the opening Allegretto, which grows more tense and agitated. The ensuing Largo offers a gently rocking melody, naïve and rustic in its Dvorak-in-America nostalgia. A more pointed scherzo leads to a fast-paced finale that retains the cheerful folk elements even with an edgy driving counterpoint.

Bernard Herrmann is best known for writing some of the finest film scores of the last century, spanning from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver with several Hitchcock classics in between. Completed in 1965, Echoes was Herrmann’s first concert work in 25 years, cast in a single 20-minute movement of ten sections.

Echoes was staged by the Royal Ballet, but is virtually unknown today, which is hard to account for. This is a terrific, consummately well-crafted and haunting work, with the tension and musical argument fluently sustained over the long span. Though the sections are subtly varied, the quartet centers on Herrmann’s characteristic bleak unease, the brooding introspection and dark romantic longing reflective of his film work; indeed, some parts sound very close to sections of Vertigo and Psycho. Echoes is rounded off with a nerve-wracked scherzo and frenzied finale before a quiet elegiac coda.

Vigorous and committed playing by the Fine Arts Quartet, though the forwardly balanced recording is on the loud side. It would be wonderful if Naxos could find their way to adding new performance of other neglected American works into the American Classics series, not least David Diamond’s ten string quartets, a significant body of work inexplicably ignored. For now, the present disc offers an offbeat program and a real discovery with Bernard Herrmann’s Echoes.