Simon Bainbridge: Chamber Music
The composing career of Simon Bainbridge (born in London in 1952) is spanned by the four chamber works in this album, all of them cast as single narrative spans. The First String Quartet, written when its composer was not yet twenty, blends lyricism and pointillism, rather as if it were recasting abstract poetry in sound; and the recent Second offers a kaleidoscopic tableau of colour and nervous energy inspired by visual art. In his Cheltenham Fragments, as the title suggests, Bainbridge uses mosaic technique to build up textures and thematic outlines. And the long lines of the virtuosic Clarinet Quintet generate fleetfooted whirlwinds as they unfold. Linda Merrick and the Kreutzer Quartet worked closely with the composer on the preparation of these recordings.
Linda Merrick (Clarinet)
Kreutzer Quartet
Peter Sheppard Skærved, violin
Mihailo Trandafilovski, violin
Clifton Harrison, viola
Neil Heyde, cello
Listen To This Recording:
- String Quartet No. 1 (1972)
- Clarinet Quintet (1993)
- Cheltenham Fragments (2004)
- String Quartet No. 2 (2014–16)
FIRST RECORDINGS
Arcana.FM :
‘Does it all work?
It does, not least through the commitment of the Kreutzer Quartet and, in the Clarinet Quintet, Linda Merrick in teasing out cohesion and imagination from music that possesses both these qualities in abundance, but which might easily be overlooked given its underlying reticence or unwillingness to ‘force the issue’. Along with its contribution to Toccata’s disc of Jeremy Dale Roberts (TOCC0487), this finds the Kreuzer at its considerable best – aided by commendably natural sound and thoughtful annotations by Peter Shepperd Skaerved and David Wordsworth.
Is it recommended?
Indeed […].’
—Richard Whitehouse, Arcana.FM