Phantasy Quartet

Phantasy Quartet, Op. 2, is the common name of a piece of chamber music by Benjamin Britten, a quartet for oboe and string trio composed in 1932. In the composer's catalogue, it is given as Phantasy, subtitled: Quartet in one movement for oboe, violin, viola, violoncello.[1][2] It was first performed in August 1933 as a BBC broadcast.

Phantasy
Quartet in one movement for oboe, violin, viola, violoncello
Oboe quartet by Benjamin Britten
Other namePhantasy Quartet
CatalogueOp. 2
Composed1932 (1932)
DedicationLéon Goossens
PerformedAugust 1933 (1933-08)

History

Britten composed Phantasy Quartet at age 18 as a student at the Royal College of Music,[3] after his first work to which he assigned an Opus number, the Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra.[4] He dedicated it to the oboist Léon Goossens, who played the first performance in a BBC broadcast on 6 August 1933,[3][5] with members of the International String Quartet.[3] The same players performed the concert premiere in London on 21 November that year. On 5 April 1934, it was performed in Florence for the International Society of Contemporary Music,[3] as the first piece to win the composer international recognition.[4]

Music

The music is in the form of a 16th-century fantasy, in an arch form with elements from the sonata form. As in Mozart's Oboe Quartet, the oboe has a solo function.[3] The duration is given as 15 minutes.[2]

It has been called "consummately crafted".[4] The music grows out of silence and in the end returns to it in symmetry. The first theme is a march, marked molto pianissimo,[4] with the cello beginning on the fingerboard of a muted cello, followed by viola, violin and finally the oboe.[6] The theme becomes later also the source of themes in a fast section, similar to the development section of the sonata form. In the slow middle section, the strings alone introduce a theme in which the oboe joins. It is followed, in symmetry, by a recapitulation of the fast section, and then the march. The musicologist Eric Roseberry summarises: "If the pastoral slow section echoes the leisurely folkiness of an Englishry that Britten had not yet entirely rejected, the Phantasy as a whole generates a tension and harmonic grittiness which are harbingers of a less complacent outlook."[4]

Recordings

A recording by oboist François Leleux with Lisa Batiashvili, Lawrence Power and Sebastian Klinger combines the quartet with Mozart's oboe quartet and other chamber music by the two composers.[6]

References
  1. Matthews, David (2013). Britten: Centenary Edition. Haus Publishing. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-0-14-192430-4.
  2. "Phantasy / Quartet in one movement for oboe, violin, viola, violoncello, op. 2". brittenproject.org. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  3. Schüssler-Bach, Kerstin. "Britten, Benjamin / Phantasy Quartet op. 2 (1932) / for oboe, violin, viola and cello" (in German). Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  4. Roseberry, Eric (1995). "Phantasy Quartet, Op 2". Hyperion Records. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  5. Kildea, Paul (2013). Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century. Penguin UK. pp. 99–100. ISBN 978-1-90-832341-5.
  6. Anthoni, Nalem (September 2008). "Britten Phantasy Quartet; Mozart Oboe Quartet". Gramophone. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
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