Phantasy Quintet for Bass Clarinet and String Quartet, Op.93
Allegro moderato
poco piu mosso
Allegro con spirito ma non troppo
Allegro moderato
"York Bowen is master of every kind of writing, which, great artist that he is, he uses…to the purposes of the powerful brilliant glowing and rich expression of a very individual beautiful and interesting musical thought " Kaikhosru Sorabji
Edwin York Bowen was born in Crouch End, London and studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, from where he became, in the first decades of the 20th century, a brilliant and popular presence in British musical life. A dazzling pianist, as well as an accomplished performer on the horn and viola, he was also a highly-regarded composer. This facility as both creative and performing artist gained him the nickname "the English Rachmaninov", but he was far more than a pianist-composer and his compositional output includes four symphonies and concertos for piano, viola, horn and violin as well as a wide range of chamber music. For three decades Bowen’s orchestral music featured regularly in Proms programmes (his symphonic poem "The Lament of Tasso" was particularly admired by Sir Henry Wood) but it has since fallen into total neglect; only recently has Stephen Hough’s superb Hyperion recording of Bowen’s 24 piano Preludes sparked a revival of interest in his solo piano and chamber music.
Bowen wrote the Phantasy Quintet in 1932 and it was broadcast shortly afterwards by the Kutcher Quartet with Walter Lear, bass clarinettist of the newly formed BBC Symphony Orchestra. It’s a unique work, and not only for Bowen - no other piece is believed to have been published for this particular combination of instruments. Along with his other accomplishments, Bowen was himself a clarinettist, and he was drawn to the bass clarinet because of its very rarity in chamber music, and its remarkable range. He wanted, he said, to use it as a bass to the string quartet as well as to write freely for the instrument in its upper register. Like Mozart and Brahms, he clearly enjoyed exploring the special sound-world of clarinet and strings, and the writing for bass clarinet is rewarding, idiomatic and deeply expressive – whether it is singing long nostalgic melodies, exchanging phrases with the cello or simply providing a sonorous, wonderfully dark bass to the whole ensemble. The Quintet is in the single movement "Phantasy" form promoted by W. W. Cobbett for entries in his famous chamber music competition, and which had proved so fruitful for Vaughan-Williams and Britten as well as the composers with whom Bowen had most in common, Frank Bridge and John Ireland. It also has a close resemblance to Bowen’s equally lovely and equally neglected Phantasy for Four Violas of 1907. Moderately-paced, thematically similar opening and closing sections frame two faster inner-movements – a halting, melancholy dance in _ time and a scherzo-like Allegro con spirito, nearly but not quite a march. The Quintet begins and ends in a deep Romantic twilight, although at the very end the troubled D minor of the opening section fades into a resigned and tranquil D major.
R.G. Bratby, 2002
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
CLICK HERE for a wide and diverse selection of contemporary music and standard repertoire programme notes.