Listening To Strings

For each section of the orchestra, I will listen to at least two movements of all three pieces of suggested listening. I will also endeavor to find videos of live performances of everything I listen to, so that I can put a 'face' to each sound that I am hearing.

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

This was a really enjoyable piece to listen to, with very lush textures from the ensemble of strings. This piece shows that strings on their own en-mass are capable of producing a very full and powerful sound with a large dynamic range.

Instruments were both bowed and plucked during the performance of this music, with individual instruments coming forward for solo parts. There is a very emotive and pastoral feel to the piece.

I found this music very interesting as it uses an early composition as the theme for its material, and there is a definite fusing of old and new. I'd be very interested in the near future to read more about this work and how Vaughan Williams uses and develops the theme.

Elgar - Serenade for Strings

This piece is scored for a smaller ensemble of strings than Vaughan Williams' Fantasia. This gives the piece a more intimate setting, which is ideal for the romantic feel of a serenade.

This piece had some really enjoyable melodies, and I enjoyed the first movement in particular.
I find music such as this exemplifies the simultaneous mass movement of the strings, which is powerful and gives an almost literal shape to the sound. The best way I can find to describe it is like a gust of wind, blowing first in one direction, then the other.

Shostakovich - String Quartets

No.1 - Even though the home key is c major in this piece, for the most part it had very strange tonality, and  it would be difficult to hear that the music was in a major key at all. Different instruments from the quartet had a turn at taking a solo part, and there was plenty of input from the viola, with a solo at the start of the second movement. There was a lot of variety in the method of playing the instruments, where I witnessed bouncing on the strings, short staccato notes, plucking and bowing.

The music was light in places, dark in others, and dance-like at other parts;  there were swift changes of mood. The strings were played with venom in the final movement, with strong, harsh sweeps of the bow.

No.8 - The DSCH motif was clearly evident throughout this piece. It was very dark and melancholy in parts. At about four and a half minutes there is an attack on the strings which is reminiscent of music from the score of 'Psycho' which I studied previously.
This piece was also dance-like in parts, offering some variety and relief from the more frenzied sections.

No.15 - I found this quartet a lot different than the others I had listened to, in that for the most part there was little variety, and a thin texture. The whole piece was full of sorrow, odd in parts and often quite dark and harsh.

There were occasional breakthroughs with somewhat lighter melodies from the intermezzo and nocturne movements.

Overall I enjoyed listening to this cross-section of Shostakovitch's string quartets, and I'll certainly be listening to some others in the collection.