And then there were three cycles – the Silesian Quartet’s version of Polish composer Graz˙yna Bacewicz’s seven string quartets following on the heels of the Amar Corde Quartet (on Acte Préalable) and the Lutosławksi Quartet (on Naxos), and securing her reputation as one of the best-known unknown composers around.
Bacewicz died in 1969 and her quartet cycle journeys from makings of tonality that are known towards a hard-fought for personal harmonic wizardry that embraces 12-tone thinking without being overly concerned with ‘correct’ 12-tone technique. Secreted kernels of melody appear discreetly from behind shadowy, shuffling textures to anticipate the soundworld of latter-day Bartók quartets – and even Luigi Nono. Bacewicz’s cycle is noticeably more consistent and chancey than Shostakovich’s, but how depressing to read elsewhere mantras about Bacewicz the “female composer”. Music as great as this ought to leave crude gender categorising far behind.
“Music as great as this ought to leave crude gender categorising far behind“
The pivot is the Fifth Quartet. Written in 1955 as she was recovering from serious injury sustained during a car crash, Bacewicz has developed her language from the broadly Neo-Classical turn-of-phrase of the Fourth Quartet – for which please don’t read Stravinskian pastiche – into a more exploratory frame of mind where structure and texture are up for grabs, and are in a sense different facets of the same impulse. There’s a moment of pure head-spinning magic near the opening of the first movement as the first violin rises towards the heavens, coloured by an extraordinary bowing effect, and the pace slows to accommodate this bolt from the blue.
The Sixth has Bacewicz adapting 12-tone know-how to her own ends. Meandering glissandi are pulled together by an emerging harmonic tug, the process putting me in mind of levers manipulating strings to assemble a toy ship inside a bottle. The piece is immersed in a soundworld familiar from Polish music of the period: think Lutosławksi, Penderecki and early Gorecki. But her Scherzo plays with deceptively simple fluctuations of mood – expressive non sequiturs that leave you punch-drunk.
No 7 represents a summation as Bacewicz reintroduces some of the rhythmic and melodic impishness of the early quartets, a flashback made to coexist with her speculative Modernism. The Silesians reach greater extremes of tempo and textural differentiation than the Lutosławksis and a clear first choice emerges, especially given Chandos’ graphic sound and Adrian Thomas’ top-notch notes.
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