Track Listing

1. Allegro
2. Presto
3. Lento
4. Allegro Molto
5. Allegramente
6. Allegro Scherzando
7. Andante Tranquillo
8. Allegro Molto

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104772 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 58 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
William Walton was a 16-year-old Oxford undergraduate when he began work on his Piano Quartet in 1918, completing it the following year. He revised the piece twice, first in 1921 (three years before its publication) and again towards the end of his life in 1974. It's an extraordinarily assured, imaginative and inventive achievement for one so young, with tantalising glimpses of something approaching greatness during the scherzo and finale in particular. Elsewhere, there are echoes of Ravel (above all the Piano Trio), Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells (another precocious talent, whose own Piano Quartet had appeared in 1916). By contrast, the A minor String Quartet is a product of Walton's maturity. Penned between 1945 and 1947, it's an immensely fluent and appealing essay, beautifully conceived for the medium and still underrated today. There can be few if any quarrels about the impressively spick-and-span and dedicated music-making here, though in the last resort the Maggini's new version of the String Quartet must still yield to the Hollywood Quartet's legendary 1949-50 mono account for Capitol (available on Testament and not to be missed). Even so, this admirably engineered Naxos coupling remains a formidable bargain, whichever way you look at it. --Andrew Achenbach