The ten Naxos String Quartets of Peter Maxwell Davies were commissioned by the label as a series, to be performed and recorded by the Maggini Quartet and issued in five volumes. One might have supposed that Maxwell Davies would have resorted to using Classical quotations and parodies, since the practice of composing string quartets in sets hearkens back to the publishing practices of the late 18th century. That fact is probably not lost on this wry composer, who has built a career on borrowing heavily from the past, and he ...
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The ten Naxos String Quartets of Peter Maxwell Davies were commissioned by the label as a series, to be performed and recorded by the Maggini Quartet and issued in five volumes. One might have supposed that Maxwell Davies would have resorted to using Classical quotations and parodies, since the practice of composing string quartets in sets hearkens back to the publishing practices of the late 18th century. That fact is probably not lost on this wry composer, who has built a career on borrowing heavily from the past, and he might well have made it a point of musical commentary. Even so, any associations here are subtle, not boldly pronounced, and there are no blatant references to the legacy of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to jolt the listener. It is still possible to discern in these compositions a sense of the great quartet tradition, at work structurally through their independent voices and balanced formal designs, yet conveyed in sound by way of modernist harmonies, modified tonality, and extended...
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