CHAN 9596 Front.qxd 16/1/08 4:33 pm Page 1 Chan 9596 CHANDOS Doreen Carwithen Premiere Recordings Violin Sonata String Quartets 1 & 2 Lydia Mordkovitch Julian Milford piano Sorrel Quartet Sorrel Quartet CHAN 9596 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 4:36 pm Page 2 Doreen Carwithen (b. 1922) String Quartet No. 1† 20:16 1 I Allegro moderato 6:19 2 II Lento 7:21 3 III Allegro 6:32 String Quartet No. 2† 19:55 4 I Adagio 9:46 5 II Allegro 10:06 Sonata for Violin and Piano* 19:47 6 I Allegro con moto 7:45 7 II Vivace 5:10 8 III Moderato 6:47 TT 60:12 Lydia Mordkovitch violin* Julian Milford piano* † Doreen Carwithen Sorrel Quartet Gina McCormack violin Catherine Yates violin Vicci Wardman viola Helen Thatcher cello 3 CHAN 9596 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 4:36 pm Page 4 Chamber Music of the A.J. Clements Prize fugal passage leads up to the big, fortissimo Doreen Carwithen: Chamber Works (1948) and the Cobbett Award (1952), remain unison climax, after which there is a gradual unknown. fading to the return of the cello subject under unison high violins which descend to an echo Doreen Carwithen was born in 1922 at Queen. Among her feature films are two For fifty-one years Clements, a London painter on the first violin against tremelo lower Haddenham, Bucks. and comes from a musical in which music takes the place of dialogue – who loved music, ran Sunday concerts during strings. The third movement is a sprightly family. Her mother – a music teacher – gave The Stranger Left No Card and On the Twelfth the winter at the South Place Institute, dance over syncopated lower strings. Rapid her the first lessons on the piano and violin at Day. Moorgate. When he died in 1938 a prize of key changes lead to a quiet, shortened the age of four, and continued teaching her 1947 also saw the selection of the £20 was awarded each year in his memory. recapitulation. This in turn quietens and slows the piano until she entered the Royal Academy overture ODTAA as the first new score to be For my First String Quartet, written in 1945 to a bar of silence. The first seven bars of the of Music as Bucks. County Scholar in 1941. chosen by the London Philharmonic Orchestra when I was a student at the Royal Academy of Presto coda are played rhythmically, pianissimo She also had cello lessons with Peers Music Advisory committee. ODTAA had its Music, I shared the prize with a Canadian and ponticello. All in unison bring the music to Coetmore, the wife of E.J. Moeran, and, while first performance at Covent Garden in March composer. a final D major chord. still at school, played the cello with a regular 1947, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. It was The Quartet was first played at a chamber I played the cello in a quartet at home, string quartet and in local orchestras. Apart a great success and many performances and concert given at the R.A.M. by the Zorian where we explored most of the classical works from these the only music she heard came broadcasts followed, particularly in the north Quartet, and Vaughan Williams was in the of Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven and the from the radio – the family did not have a of England. Bishop Rock (1952) was chosen audience. He chatted to me and was most Schubert A minor Quartet. As a student in the gramophone, so she was dependent on the by Rudolf Schwarz to open the City of complimentary about the work – except for Royal Academy chamber music class I played BBC for her knowledge of orchestral music. As Birmingham Orchestra’s season of the coda where I had used seven bars of second cello in the great Schubert Quintet. it was wartime this was limited to concerts on Promenade Concerts. The same year saw the ponticello. This he disliked – ‘nasty noise’, he This cello playing taught me that the lower the Home Service, but these led her to learn first public performance of the Concerto for said! Other performances followed, including strings – viola and cello in particular – can be score-reading so as to gain insight into the Piano and Strings at the Henry Wood one at a South Place Sunday concert, one for used most expressively, so much of my writing orchestral sounds – a facility which proved Promenade Concerts, where she was the the Society for the Promotion of New Music includes long, flowing melodies, using the invaluable in her future career. only woman composer to be represented in and a broadcast in a ‘New Music’ programme whole range of the instrument. The cello is In 1947 J. Arthur Rank started an that season. on the Third Programme by the Aleph Quartet. particularly telling in its upper register, where Apprenticeship Scheme for composers to In spite of the initial success of these The same players later broadcast my Second it has its own special quality of sound. So my specialize in the study of film music. works, publishers were not interested in a String Quartet in the same series. Quartets really use all the instruments equally Carwithen was the first to be selected from ‘woman composer’, so scores and parts Quartet No. 1 is classical in style and form. – not just a tune on the violin and a rather the R.A.M. for this and subsequently wrote gradually returned home where they remained The first movement, allegro moderato, is quite dull accompaniment from the rest! scores for over thirty films. Her documentaries cocooned, rarely getting a hearing. In the same adventurous harmonically – I do rather like W.W. Cobbett (1847–1937) was an amateur ranged from a study of oil pipe lines to the way the two Carwithen String Quartets, dissonances! The slow movement, in a minor violinist and a keen enthusiast of chamber official film of the coronation – Elizabeth is although awarded the principal prizes for key, has frequent changes of tonality. Here a music. He devoted himself to the 4 5 CHAN 9596 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 4:36 pm Page 6 encouragement of new works and offered tempo with much bravado. This is not an exact to the early theme of dropping seconds on London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic prizes and commissions to British composers repeat but an extended development which the piano, and the violin takes the music to a Orchestra, the Hallé, the BBC Philharmonic and for single-movement pieces – without gradually fades to F minor and a coda based pianissimo ending. the English Chamber Orchestra under such conditions as to the form to be employed. On on the first movement until the viola plays To answer the enquiries about my unusual conductors as Vassily Sinaisky, Neeme Järvi and the advice of the Musicians’ Company these again the opening minor second and is joined surname: No! I did not invent it, as one person Richard Hickox. An impressive discography of were frequently called ‘Phantasy Quartets’. by the rest of the quartet in unison. suggested! I am descended from an old over forty-five recordings reflects Lydia My Second Quartet, which received a The Violin Sonata is a later work than the Devonshire family, whose ancestors date back Mordkovitch’s very wide repertoire, Cobbett prize, is written in two extended Quartets – the exact date I do not remember, to the early 1400s. I am delighted to find that encompassing music from the complete solo movements. It begins on the viola, using a and there is no indication on the score. It is in I am not the last Carwithen, but have a vastly works for violin by Bach to the concertos of minor second, and it is this interval which is three movements, but these are not in the extended family, proved by the various family Shostakovich, her recording of which for used throughout the first movement, usual pattern of moderato, slow, vivace and trees which have been sent to me from Chandos won a Gramophone Award and a sometimes inverted making a major seventh. do not follow a strictly sonata-form structure branches of the family in this country and Diapason d’Or. Her work has twice been The movement begins molto adagio and is either. The whole work is full of virtuoso from America. nominated for a Gramophone Award and has mostly sombre in mood. It grows to an intense writing for both instruments and is brilliantly received seven Critic’s Choices, and recent middle section, broadening to a tune in thirds played on this recording. © 1998 Doreen Carwithen recordings have won major nominations or played high on the A string by the two violins, The opening movement allegro con moto is prizes across Europe. then, gradually quietening, there is a return to characterized by the drop of a major second, Lydia Mordkovitch was born in Russia and the original tempo, with the viola playing the and has broad, sweeping melodies with a studied at the Odessa Conservatory and After graduating from Oxford with a First initial theme pizzicato. After much pondering passionate middle section. This is followed by at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in English, Julian Milford studied piano during which it slowly sinks in G flat major on a vivace 9/8 pattern which never relinquishes where she was and piano a pedal point, the movement resolves itself in its tremendous pace. There is a long tune over assistant to accompaniment a major key. the insistent rhythm played alternately by the David Oistrakh.