Edmund Rubbra: String Quartets
Dante Quartet; Michael Dussek, piano; Judith Busbridge and Krysia Osostowicz, violas
Dutton CDLX 7114 [59:13]
You can almost hear the rosin dust settling on the strings.
String Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 (1951); Lyric Movement for String Quartet and Piano, Op. 24 (1929, rev. 1946); Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn, “O Quando in Cruce,” for Two Violas, Op. 117a (1962); String Quartet No. 4, Op. 150 (1977)
The Rubbra revival continues to gather momentum—thank heavens—and Dutton’s championship of this most uncompromising of English composers deserves our gratitude. This is the fourth installment in their chamber music series, and while I wish they’d given us all four quartets complete (there was certainly room on the disc), what we have here matters enormously.
Rubbra’s music doesn’t yield its secrets easily. It demands patience, a willingness to surrender to what can feel like glacial tempi, an acceptance that drama here unfolds through the slow accretion of polyphonic layers rather than through extrovert gesture. The Dante Quartet—young players, relatively speaking—seem to have absorbed this aesthetic completely.
They understand that Rubbra’s long-breathed melodic lines require an almost Renaissance sense of horizontal flow, that his counterpoint must sing rather than merely coexist. The Second Quartet opens their program, and immediately one notices their approach to tempo. They take the first movement nearly a minute and a half faster than the English Quartet on Tremula—8:35 against exactly ten minutes—and the difference is revelatory.
I’ve lived with this work for decades, and suddenly the architecture makes sense in ways it never quite did before. The form emerges with clarity; one hears how Rubbra’s thematic transformations actually function as structural pillars. The English Quartet’s reading, exquisite as it is, tends to emphasize local color over large-scale design.
But here’s the thing about tempo in Rubbra: the composer himself, in his later years, complained that everyone took his music too fast. I remember him saying this to me when he was nearly eighty, and one had to consider that an octogenarian’s internal clock runs rather differently than a young performer’s. The Dante players have clearly studied the metronome markings—in the famous “"Scherzo" polymetrico,” they nail the crotchet = 144 exactly—but they’ve also grasped something more elusive: the difference between speed and momentum.
That "scherzo", with its dizzying cross-rhythms and simultaneous time signatures, could easily become a mere display of technical prowess. The Dante Quartet manages the virtuosity while maintaining musical phrasing, though I must admit the English Quartet achieves even greater expressivity at the same tempo. It’s a remarkable feat—to phrase more beautifully while hurtling through Rubbra’s most fiendish rhythmic complexities.
The Cavatina breathes naturally despite a quicker pace than usual, and the "finale"—well, here the Dante players’ interpretive courage pays off handsomely. With the Fourth Quartet we encounter Rubbra at his most austere and concentrated. I confess that when I first heard this work in a BBC broadcast by the Dartington Quartet, the opening movement seemed to lack cohesion entirely.
I wrote to the composer about it—one could do such things then—and received a characteristically thoughtful reply explaining his formal intentions. The absence of a separate "scherzo", the substitution of a lively coda, the need for a reflective movement to follow . . . it all made sense on paper.
But the Sterlings on Conifer never quite solved the interpretive puzzle; they seem to lose their way in the thickets of Rubbra’s polyphony. The Dante Quartet, however, illuminates the structure with remarkable clarity. The first movement finally coheres, the logic of Rubbra’s thematic processes becoming audible in ways I’d previously only understood intellectually.
This alone makes the disc valuable. Yet I must register a serious reservation about the recording itself. At climactic moments—particularly the magnificent closing minute of the Fourth Quartet, where the first violin soars above tremolando scales in viola and cello—the sound becomes harsh and congested.
That grand, noble peroration deserves better. The same problem afflicts the climaxes in the Lyric Movement, which receives its premiere release here. This is unfortunate, because the rendition itself captures the work’s character beautifully: those rolling triplets that recall the First Piano Trio, the pastoral coloring that’s more pronounced here than in Rubbra’s mature style, the free-fantasy treatment of opening material that’s characteristic of his method.
The Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn offers something rather special—a glimpse into Rubbra’s compositional workshop. Originally for solo viola, the work exists here in a two-viola version, and hearing it in this form while following the solo score reveals exactly how Rubbra decorates his plainchant source. Counterpoint emerges from within the melody itself, entwining over and under the chant, colored by pizzicato and tremolo.
Fifteen brief meditations in just over ten minutes, and time does seem to evaporate—that quality of spiritual improvisation that Rubbra achieves in his Meditation for Organ and, most profoundly, in the Eleventh Symphony. Krysia Osostowicz and Judith Busbridge play with complete understanding of Rubbra’s contemplative idiom. Osostowicz, whom we know from the superb Violin Sonatas disc that launched this series, proves herself an equally distinguished violist.
John Pickard’s booklet notes, written by a Rubbra pupil, provide valuable context without descending into hagiography. The documentation is exemplary—photographs of the performers, of the composer at the piano, detailed session information. So: an important release, marred somewhat by recording balances that fail the music at crucial moments, but redeemed by performances of genuine insight.
The Dante Quartet’s interpretive intelligence, their willingness to rethink received wisdom about tempo and phrasing, makes this essential listening for anyone who cares about Rubbra’s achievement. At mid-price, and given Dutton’s distinguished track record with British chamber music, one shouldn’t complain too loudly about the missing quartets.
