String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 / String Trio, Op. 1 (original published version) Naxos 8.572903
Though Miklós Rózsa became one of the most admired of film composers, he had always written music in other forms and his two published string quartets reveal important facets of his musical background. String Quartet No 1 was written in 1950 when he was under contract with M-G-M and, with its nocturnal and folk-dance imagery, is redolent of his Hungarian youth. String Quartet No 2 is prophetic of his later sparer style, though it too is infused with great energy and high drama. The String Trio, Op 1, recorded for the first time in its original 1929 published version, abounds with youthful vitality.
Review:
Now more popularly remembered as a composer of film scores, Miklos
Rozsa’s musical life started at the early age of seven as a prodigy composer
and violinist. Built into his contract with the MGM film company was a three
month break in each year to further his ‘serious’ composing, and it was in
those periods that both of his quartets were written. The first dated from 1950,
its content placing it in mainstream tonal works of the time that flirted with
atonality. With his native Hungarian influences ever present, it is a score
redolent in easily assimilated thematic material, and shows his mastery of the
quartet idiom and the juxtaposition of instrumental sonorities. It was to be
thirty-one years later that he returned to the idiom…the whole work is so
instantly enjoyable. The disc is completed by the String Trio composed when he
was twenty and still at the Leipzig Conservatory. The young British group, the
Tippett Quartet, play with passion and tremendous commitment, and the sound
quality is the best chamber music disc I have heard from Naxos.
David Denton, David's Review Corner