REDISCOVERED GEMS

Harry White speaks to Carmen Flores and Katie Stillman of the Villiers Quartet about recording rare repertoire by a pair of British maverick geniuses – Ethel Smyth and Frederick Delius

T heNorth York Moors National Park has been an often-used muse for great artists. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the poetry of Wordsworth and the writings of Laurence Sterne are all indebted to its glorious and forbidding landscape. The area boasts a rich musical heritage too, something that is set to continue with its stunning new venue, Ayriel Studios. Part recording studio, part retreat, Ayriel Studios is barely a year old but is already forging a formidable reputation as a setting that meets the creative, acoustic and practical needs of today’s musicians.

‘We were one of the first quartets to do a studio recording there,’ explains Carmen Flores, violist of the Villiers Quartet, which has recorded an album of string quartets by Frederick Delius and Ethel Smyth at the facility. ‘We didn’t know anything about it, but we were familiar with the artistic director, cellist Jamie Walton, and our interest was piqued!’

‘It is really well set up for musicians to go and spend working time there,’ says Katie Stillman, the Villiers’ first violin.

‘Firstly, you get to stay on site, which allows you to immerse yourself fully in the project. We planned a day of recording that worked just for us. If you are a night owl, you can just record all night. It’s so well set up that you can work in the way that is comfortable for you or your ensemble. Our cellist Leo Melvin, for example, loves to wind down by playing the piano, so after dinner he would go and play. I like the other end of the day, so I would get up early to warm up. Also, the sound feels beautiful and natural and the producer is really accessible. And the tech is incredible.’

CHARLES GERVAIS

‘I HEAR SMYTH DOING INTERESTING THINGS HARMONICALLY THAT I DON’T HEAR FROM OTHER COMPOSERS’ –

‘You need that space and peace,’ adds Flores. ‘There are no distractions, but you feel well taken care of.’

The album features two string quartets by two significant figures in English composition, Delius and Smyth. Both works share a fragmentary genesis. Delius’s First String Quartet of 1888 remained incomplete until 2018, with only the final two movements published before the missing first two movements were rediscovered and acquired in full by the Delius Trust at auction and reassembled by music historian Daniel Grimley. Smyth’s E minor Quartet is also a tale of two halves. She began it in 1902 but abandoned it before picking it up again a decade later, completing the final two movements in 1912. The intervening years saw a significant evolution in Smyth’s personal, political and musical profile, something that the Villiers players were keen to explore. ‘We were already learning about Smyth’s life as part of our recent symposium at Oxford on diversity and the string quartet; learning about her life and her voice, both political and musical,’ says Flores.

‘In the years that split the quartet’s composition, Smyth not only became increasingly politicised within the suffragettes, but she also began her opera The Wreckers,’ says Stillman. ‘Her life and work changed so much in this time and it’s interesting to think about whether you really can hear this in music. A string quartet is often a genre in which composers believe they have a lot to prove. In some ways, like a symphony, the form of the string quartet is a challenge, and I think she really felt that. Other than an early student work, it’s her only known example of the genre, so it is clearly significant in terms of understanding her musical language and identity.’

Stillman continues: ‘At around the time she picked the piece back up, a very close friend passed away, so you get this incredibly heartfelt slow movement. The first two movements are from a different part of her life, musically, politically and personally. But what’s fascinating is that she hasn’t gone back to revise them.

l–r Katie Stillman, Tamaki Higashi, Leo Melvin and Carmen Flores at the sessions in Ayriel Studios

MICHAEL WHIGHT

So, while all four movements do feel different, they all work within the same harmonic scheme and she certainly conceived of the work as a whole. What is noticeable is that she tries to fit so many ideas into the music, and that keeps it alive and full of intrigue.’

‘We are seeing here a fully fledged, personal voice,’ adds Flores. ‘Often, when people aren’t familiar with a composer, they compare them to a reference point. But this is an individual voice. It’s very explorative harmonically, and formally epic. You have to be fully present as a listener and performer.

It’s tonal, yes, but I hear her doing interesting things harmonically that I don’t hear from other composers.’

‘Possibly the most beautiful moments are when she takes two instruments and intertwines them, playing with the melodic and accompaniment line,’ adds Stillman. ‘But it’s the colour of harmony and the insistence on motivic development that are the core features.

The slow movement is the heart of the work, in terms of its emotive intensity and scale, but it’s hard to be sure whether you’re hearing stylistic development within the work or just imposing what you know about the context on to the music. We have a traditional, grand-scale first movement, a quirky Scherzo, a romantic central movement and then a fugal finale. In that way it’s quite a traditional structure. Certainly, you could say that these last two movements appear mature. But they are not incongruous with the earlier half.’

In contrast to Smyth’s maturity, the beginning of Delius’s First Quartet feels like the first flush of youth. ‘In the first movement, I always feel as if he’s writing for a much bigger ensemble,’ says Stillman. ‘There’s a symphonic treatment of relatively sparse content, in terms of notes, and he often stops and starts between the dramatic and intimate. For me, the challenge is trying to work out what he means by these vastly contrasting gestures. The Scherzo is an early manifestation of a later work, so he clearly liked the idea. The middle section of this movement is so beautiful, harmonically, but it looks as though it’s been scored for an extra instrument. The second violin and viola form the harmonic centre of this section, and their harmonies are fully realised, as if they were originally conceived for quintet or even sextet. It’s as though Delius is experimenting with how far he can push the quartet form to achieve the harmonic colour he wants.’

‘It’s fiendishly difficult,’ says Flores. ‘You sense that we are hearing the recognisable, mature Delius harmonically now. But by the 1916 quartet, when he revisits this material, he has learned better how to frame it within the string quartet medium. I feel very much as though this is a portrait of a stage in his development as a composer. His musical voice is strong here, but it’s not always articulated with the control we see in his later life. It’s a fantastic work though, and the audience reaction is always one of surprise and pleasure that they haven’t encountered it before.’

Getting under the skin of these intriguing works in the setting of Ayriel Studios has clearly been a great joy for the Villiers. ‘I really enjoyed working with our producer, Michael Whight; he is tremendously musical and got the balance right between our desire to create genuine musical expression while ensuring we came out with something that stands up technically,’ says Stillman.

‘It’s a mindset: trying to capture the spontaneity of the concert hall in the recording studio while accepting there are some sections you are going to get very closely acquainted with. But the entire process was hugely rewarding.’