By the 20th century, the string quartet had become a mainstay for most composers. It was often treated as a highly personal and introspective species of chamber music, as opposed to the more public statements that the large-scale symphony represented. British composers especially gravitated to the form, and while their works never achieved the revered status of Béla Bartók's or Dmitry Shostakovich's groundbreaking cycles, the quartet proved to be a reliable idiom for displaying the variety of expressions in post-Romantic ...
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By the 20th century, the string quartet had become a mainstay for most composers. It was often treated as a highly personal and introspective species of chamber music, as opposed to the more public statements that the large-scale symphony represented. British composers especially gravitated to the form, and while their works never achieved the revered status of Béla Bartók's or Dmitry Shostakovich's groundbreaking cycles, the quartet proved to be a reliable idiom for displaying the variety of expressions in post-Romantic and modern chamber music. This box set from Naxos brings together works by British masters, including quartets by Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge, John Ireland, Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, and Benjamin Britten, along with significant contributions by William Alwyn, Malcolm Arnold, Arthur Bliss, Lennox Berkeley, Arnold Bax, E.J. Moeran, Alan Rawsthorne, and Edmund Rubbra. The Maggini Quartet's ambitious project to record this large body of work began with the release of the first...
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