composer Noah Max on his 4 string quartets not too long ago recorded by the Tippett Quartet on Toccata Classics

Noah Max (Photograph: Richard Ecclestone)

Final month, Toccata Classics launched a disc of the 4 string quartets by the younger British composer Noah Max [see details] recorded by the Tippett Quartet (John Mills, Jeremy Isaac, Lydia Lowndes-Northcott, Bozidar Vukotic). This group premiered Noah’s String Quartet No. 2 on the Thaxted Competition in 2023, the place Noah was composer in residence [see my review]. That is the second disc of Noah’s music on Toccata, the primary Songs of Loneliness being a disc of assorted solos and chamber music [see my review].

The 4 quartets have been all written over fairly a brief interval, but are remarkably numerous. The primary quartet from 2020 is linked to the fable The Man Who Planted Bushes written in 1953 by French author Jean Giono (1895-1970), narrated on the disc by Sir Michael Morpurgo. In three actions, the music is tonal and atmospheric, supplementing the narrative and the work interweaves textual content and music, generally conserving them impartial and generally as melodrama. The end result slows down the narrative considerably however creates a placing synthesis. The work is finally constructive, Morpurgo’s final phrases are ‘in any case, humanity is admirable‘, and it types a powerful distinction with Noah’s fourth quartet.

The second quartet, from 2021, was impressed by a portray by Joan Miró, The Ladder of Escape, and sculptures by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Like the primary quartet, it’s in three extremely contrasting motion. The primary ‘Andante glaciale’ bleak and intense with edgy harmonies, the second, ‘Intensamente con ira’ shifting between frantic scurrying and nearly stasis but with an intense, nearly offended and arduous received climax, adopted by a last motion, ‘Unearthly; mesmeric’ that appears nearly haunted.

The third quartet dates from 2022 and was commissioned by the Brompton Quartet who gave the premiere at Conway Corridor. In a single, ten-minute motion it’s intense, densely woven counterpoint with tightly wound line and expressionist motifs all in intently labored argument.

The fourth quartet from 2023 is intimately linked to Noah’s opera, The Baby in Striped Pyjamas [see my review], a piece that treats the Holocaust instantly. The quartet is in a single fifteen minute motion, uneasy, intense and dramatic, the fabric stressed and finally uncomfortable.

Once I requested Noah why string quartets, he defined that enjoying string quartets was how he fell in love with music, describing them as his old flame. (Noah grew up in a musical family, his mother and father are the cellist Robert Max and pianist Zoë Solomon).  As a younger cellist, although he performed in orchestras, what he actually loved was enjoying quartets and felt it was how he got here into contact with different musicians. Moreover, the bass line of a Haydn quartet was a universe unto itself, the bedrock of a palace, and he felt linked to the music in a method that he had not felt earlier than. Enjoying quartets made him take into consideration how music is put collectively, and after that first publicity, his love developed and deepened. He labored his method by means of the core quartet repertoire, into extra prolonged strategies, studying how one can construct fascinating textures, and in contrast to something earlier than, making a collection of strains of musical enquiry that also retained hyperlinks to canonic works.

He feels that string quartets not kind the spine of composers’ oeuvres the way in which they used to do, and he want to attempt to maintain quartet writing as a big a part of his output. The quartets on the brand new album are 4 of his strongest items and he feels near them.

The 4 string quartets are all strikingly completely different and Noah admits that every time he writes a brand new piece there’s a pure response towards the work earlier than. He spends time doing one factor, so inevitably the subsequent brings a couple of response. However, that mentioned, he feels that they’re nonetheless unified, that he’s discovering his personal voice. He sees the works as the results of a youthful creativeness trying to find potentialities. The 4 have a typical harmonic language, together with the thorny, micro-tonal third quartet, and he displays that each one his works, regardless of how various, have a selected harmonic stamp.

The exterior influences in these works come up partly as a result of when writing a lot will get folded into the music. From a younger age, he was uncovered to visible arts in addition to music, so it’s maybe inevitable that his second quartet takes visible clues as its inspiration. However then he admits that he does probably not know what goes into each bit, and there are inevitably completely different influences. He finds it fascinating to look again, contrasting with how he sees the works now, and listening to them extra in efficiency means he will get to know the items in another way. In the end, he finds inspiration a little bit of a thriller – scary however liberating.

The primary quartet, impressed by Jean Giono’s fable, interlinks music and narration and I puzzled what it could be like with out the narration, and actually, the work was recorded like that with the narration added later. He feels that the piece ‘got here from an odd place’ however he’s keen on it and has not written the rest prefer it. He’s within the extent to which you could possibly divorce the music from the textual content and even give the music a brand new context and he would love to do that, including that it could solely add to the richness of the factor.

For the second quartet, he hopes that you don’t want to be aware of Miro’s portray to understand the work, however the music is distinctly an expression of what Miro and the works by Moore and Hepworth imply to him. And he provides that anybody who has not encountered Miro’s work definitely ought to discover a method to encounter them and that his first encounter surprised him and made him need to write music.

Will there be one other quartet, I puzzled? And certainly, he has already began work on a brand new one, however he intentionally left a spot and it’s a little over two years since he wrote the fourth quartet. His life has modified since then, he has written lots and feels that he does have one thing else to say, including that the work could have commonality with the earlier quartets. You solely have to have a look at the variety of quartets that different composers have written (Haydn wrote 68, Shostakovich wrote 15) to grasp that it’s an inexhaustible style. One that’s within the forefront of his thoughts.

Trying forward, he feedback that he feels the identical because the artist Maggi Hambling, that it’s dangerous luck to speak about tasks till they’re full. He does admit to having an thrilling challenge for Ian Bostridge within the works, and that after we spoke he was lifeless within the centre of a Kaddish for strings and refrain. That is meant to be a memorial prayer for victims of Kristallnacht (the pogrom towards Jews carried out by members of the Nazi celebration in November 1938). This would be the third of Noah’s works (with The Baby within the Striped Pyjamas and the fourth string quartet) linked by a typical thread of the Holocaust. He has spent a whole lot of time exploring that specific a part of the human psyche and feels that there’ll come a time when he needs to discover different darkish corners.

Noah Max and Alexandra Balog

In Might he shall be in New York, the place pianist Alexandra Balog shall be premiering his new Piano Sonata No. II: The Curve at Carnegie Corridor, although he has not fairly received his head round that one but, the occasion has not fairly hit him.

Noah Max: String Quartets: No. 1, The Man Who Planted Bushes, Op. 25; No. 2, Op. 37; No. 3, Op. 41; No. 4, Op. 45
Sir Michael Morpurgo, narrator, The Tippett Quartet (John Mills and Jeremy Isaac, violins, Lydia Lowndes-Northcott, viola, Božidar Vukotić, cello) – Toccata TOCC 0749