Bliss: First String Quartet; Second String Quartet.
Fanny Mendelssohn Quartet — Renate Eggebrecht-Kupsa, violin; [remaining players]; Troubadisc [catalog no.]. Recorded [dates], [venue]. Program notes by Meinhard Saremba. CD.
The Fanny Mendelssohn Quartet’s recording of Arthur Bliss’s two numbered string quartets arrives on Naxos—though the disc was originally issued by Renate Eggebrecht-Kupsa’s estimable Troubadisc label in the late 1990s. This reissue is welcome. Bliss’s chamber music deserves better than the marginal position it occupies in the catalog, and these performances make a strong case for works that reveal a composer thinking with unusual intensity about the medium.
The First Quartet dates from 1941, written during Bliss’s American sojourn—he was stranded there by the war’s outbreak while on a lecture tour, returning only when Adrian Boult summoned him to a senior BBC post. The Griller Quartet premiered it at one of those legendary National Gallery concerts in wartime London, where the music must have sounded both defiant and elegiac. What strikes me immediately in the Mendelssohn players’ performance is their grasp of the work’s essential restlessness. This isn’t pastoral England. Bliss pushes the quartet through densely chromatic territory with a rhythmic drive that suggests Bartók more than Vaughan Williams—though the harmonic language remains distinctively his own, those rich seventh chords and modal inflections that mark his best work.
The opening movement surges forward with real urgency. Eggebrecht-Kupsa’s first violin cuts through the texture with brilliant clarity, and the ensemble balance—this is crucial—allows you to hear how cunningly Bliss distributes his material. He was a superb orchestrator, and that skill translates here into quartet writing where no voice merely accompanies. Listen to how the cello line in the slow movement doesn’t simply anchor but converses, sometimes leading the harmonic argument. Friedeman Kupsa’s tone has warmth without becoming treacly, and his intonation in the high-register passages of the third movement is exemplary.
The Second Quartet, premiered at the 1950 Edinburgh Festival, shows Bliss attempting something more ambitious—perhaps too ambitious. He called it his finest chamber work, aiming for “an emotion truly and clearly felt and caught forever in formal perfection.” Noble aspiration. The result is more problematic than the First, though the brief sostenuto movement achieves something close to that ideal. Here the Mendelssohn players find a hushed intensity, a breathless quality that suspends time. The microphone placement—closer than on the competing Hyperion disc with the Delmé Quartet—serves this movement particularly well, catching the fine gradations of dynamics and the shimmer of sul ponticello effects.
But the outer movements pose challenges. The first movement’s relentless activity needs more breathing space than either ensemble really provides, and I’m not convinced the material justifies its length. There’s a Britten-esque complexity to the part-writing that can sound fussy rather than intricate. The "finale", marked Vivo e con brio, works better—it has some of that Italianate swagger Bliss admired in Walton, though whether Bliss’s essentially northern temperament could fully inhabit that Mediterranean light remains questionable.
The Mendelssohn Quartet takes consistently faster tempos than the Delmé—9:49 against 12:02 in the Second Quartet’s "finale". Generally I prefer the brisker approach. It prevents the music from settling into comfortable gestures, maintains the sense of argument rather than discourse. The Troubadisc engineering, with its more forward sound, suits this interpretive stance. You hear the players’ articulation with vivid immediacy—every sforzando, every subtle shift in bow pressure. Some listeners may find it too close, too analytical. I find it revealing.
What both quartets prove is Bliss’s command of large-scale architecture. He thinks in paragraphs, not merely phrases, building movements through the accumulation and transformation of relatively simple materials. This requires performers who understand the long line, who can shape a ten-minute span without losing momentum. The Mendelssohn players generally succeed, though there are moments—particularly in the Second Quartet’s development sections—where the thread grows tenuous.
One regrets that neither this disc nor the Hyperion includes Bliss’s earlier, unnumbered quartets. The 1914 work would provide valuable context, showing the composer before the Great War changed everything. Still, these two substantial works offer more than enough to occupy serious attention. They’re not easy pieces—harmonically dense, technically demanding, emotionally complex without being obviously expressive. Bliss doesn’t seduce; he argues, cajoles, insists.
The Mendelssohn Quartet’s advocacy is persuasive. Their technical security allows them to take risks, and while not every interpretive choice convinces, the overall conception has integrity. The recorded sound, despite its closeness, captures the essential character of these instruments in sympathetic acoustics. Program notes by Meinhard Saremba provide solid historical context, though I miss the personal reminiscences George Dannatt brought to the Hyperion release.
This reissue on Naxos makes an important recording more accessible. Bliss’s quartets won’t displace Britten or Tippett in affections, but they deserve a place in any thorough survey of twentieth-century British chamber music. Passionate, rigorous, occasionally thorny—rather like the composer himself.
