Quatuors A Cordes N°1 A N°4 [CD de audio] Britten Quartet and Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998) was a leading figure in 20th-century British contemporary music. His four string quartets span his entire creative life and show him as an extremely skilled and innovative composer. In his string quartets, the most challenging and complicated form of music, Tippett draws inspiration from Beethoven's late quartets, particularly his fugue writing, and the intricate and complex textures of the four voices. The Britten Quartet already showed its special qualities in 20th-century British music, its recording of Benjamin Britten's String Quartets ( Brilliant Classics 9168) receiving praise. Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998) wrote a total of seven string quartets, along with two early efforts that he himself suppressed, considering the works too immature. Like the symphonies, quartets numbers 1-4, heard on this disc, span Tippett's development as a composer and reveal his deep sensitivity and skill for contrapuntal music. Taking particular inspiration from Beethoven, for whom Tippett had great respect, the quartets display a rigorous intellectual logic and stylistic characteristics that bear the hallmarks of Beethoven's late style. In quartets numbers 2 and 3, for example, Tippett places particular importance on fugal writing, numbers 1 and 2 show hints of sonata form, while quartet number 4 is a multi-part work: four movements played without interruption . However, despite Tippett's sources of inspiration, these works are also testament to his fundamentally innovative approach to composition, heard in the complex and intricate combinations of rhythms, structural experimentation and confident manipulation of string sonorities.