FLINDERS QUARTET
Natsuko Yoshimoto • guest violin
Wilma Smith • violin
Helen Ireland • viola
Zoe Knighton • cello
AGATHA YIM, POLYPHONIC PICTURES filming and editing
THOMAS GRUBB, MANO MUSICA sound engineering, editing and mastering
Filmed July 2023 in the Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Wurundjeri Country/Southbank
This project was made possible through support from Creative Victoria and Creative Australia
ELIZABETH MACONCHY 1907-1994
String Quartet No. 5 (composed 1948)
I. Molto lento - Allegro molto
II. Presto
III. Lento espressivo
IV. Allegro
Elizabeth Maconchy (known affectionately as Betty) was born in 1907 and is considered one of Great Britain and Ireland’s greatest composers of the twentieth century. Growing up in a family that was not focussed on the arts in any way, it is extraordinary that she declared her intention to become a composer in her mid-teens, even before hearing a symphony orchestra for the first time. After being accepted into the Royal College of Music, she studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams who was incredibly supportive; but the head of the school refused to award her the prestigious Mendelssohn scholarship saying, according to the Times of London, "If we give you the scholarship you will only get married and never write another note." She went on to have children and write many more notes, and her daughter, Nicola LeFanu, is a very successful composer herself.
Maconchy owes a great deal of her unique musical voice to her period of study in Prague, where Vaughan Williams advised her to extend her musical knowledge rather than delve into the twelve-tone system of composition sweeping Austria and other parts of Europe at the time. She was introduced to Bartok and Berg, and it is this influence that we hear in her thirteen string quartets.
Each of the thirteen quartets is accessible, containing more than compositional cleverness and intellect. Indeed, one only needs to scrape the surface of her body of work to realise she explores the whole range of the human experience: from her beautifully crafted and very cheeky opera “The Sofa”, to her ballets and symphonic works.
Maconchy’s thirteen quartets were written over a span of fifty years, with the first composed in 1932 and the thirteenth completed in 1984 as the set piece for the 1985 Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition (in which our very own Wilma Smith competed, placing third with her then quartet, the Lydian Quartet).
Maconchy’s fifth quartet won the Edwin Evans Memorial prize of £25 in 1948, and in 1955, a program on the BBC was dedicated to her six quartets to date, testament to their cultural importance of the time. Accolades continued throughout her lifetime with her being joint recipient of the Radcliffe Music Award in 1969 for her ninth string quartet; one of the other recipients was Peter Sculthorpe for one of his string quartets. Endorsed as a composer of the highest stature with prizes, commissions and numerous performances, her career was certainly successful and yet she was still financially dependent on her husband. She did not work as a performer or teacher, instead choosing to focus solely on her compositional output.
Premiered by the Hurwitz Quartet in 1949, the fifth string quartet begins with an interval of a semi-tone as the starting point of a long lyrical line in the cello, and it is this interval that is exploited throughout the entire piece. You will hear each instrument play the opening theme in turn, with a second theme introduced as a counter melody before the tempo is changed abruptly to Allegro molto and a rollicking dance featuring an interplay between 3/4 and 6/8. After the viola brings us back to the Lento material, we are immediately back in Allegro molto mode and if you listen closely, you will hear the opening theme restated in the faster tempo, again in a canon. The movement ends in a satisfying C major.
The second movement is a playful scherzando, stepping up by a semitone to C# from the previous C major. There are so many ways of exploring the interval of a semitone but perhaps one of the most inventive is the opening of the third movement. By having all the instruments fall by a major seventh (the inverse interval of a semitone) it gives the illusion of an expansive breadth, rather than a simple shift between G flat major and G major. It is in this movement that we hear Maconchy’s obvious affinity with vocal music, having the instruments play in a parlando (speaking) style, conversing with great interest with one another. The sinister insistence of the cello pizzicatos in the middle of this movement do remind us of the intensity of WWII, ever fresh in her mind.
These words by Maconchy are very apt in describing the final movement: “I use a counterpoint of rhythms as well as melodic lines – so you may have two or more independent rhythms working together simultaneously. And the object of all this is to achieve a more concentrated expression of the emotion implicit in the musical ideas themselves.” You will hear incredible interplay alongside a delightfully playful pizzicato section with canons that are so fast they’re easy to miss, but the overall effect is a whirlwind rich with counterpoint before we are brought very firmly back to C major.