Castalian Quartet: Elias

The Strad Issue: October 2024

Description: A modern master is given performances of great conviction

Musicians: Thomas Kemp (violin) Ann Beilby (viola) Natalie Clein (cello) Danny Driver, Sophia Rahman (piano) Castalian Quartet

Works: Elias: String Quartet; L’innominatal; Of Elutropia; Duo; Three Scherzi; But when I sleep

Catalogue number: SIGNUM SIGCD788

It’s hard to imagine more committed or more persuasive accounts of the string music of Brian Elias than the ones gathered together here. The Indian-born British composer is a senior figure in UK music, with an appropriately broad and considered output to match.

Elias’s compositional roots in the Second Viennese School, particularly the music of Webern, are evident throughout his sometimes thorny, uncompromising writing, but it’s shot through with a compelling sense of melodic and harmonic richness, and a distinct feeling that these are utterances of emotional and philosophical meaning, never merely serial exercises.

Cellist Natalie Clein’s vivid account of his 1982 Of Elutropia, for instance, draws a remarkable range of tone and attack from conventional playing techniques, while violinist Thomas Kemp has a gloriously unassuming directness and unadorned authenticity in the 1970 Duo, in which the violinist is very much a duelling competitor against pianist Sophia Rahman.

The disc closes with a deeply lyrical, thoughtful account of Elias’s Shakespeare-inspired 1987 But when I sleep from Ann Beilby, but it’s the opener – Elias’s sole String Quartet, from 2012 – that really lingers in the memory. The Castalian Quartet picks apart the piece’s dense arguments and conveys its vivid textures superbly in a fiercely committed account. It’s a deeply rewarding disc whose exquisitely crafted music is matched by performances of authority.

DAVID KETTLE