Quartet (1998) Perusal Score (PDF)

for clarinet, violin, cello and piano

Duration: 8 mins

Commissioned by London Sinfonietta with funds from the RVW Trust

first performance February 1998 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall

Recorded by the New Music Players for “Dark Formations” CD Métier MSV 28530

Fiona Cross clarinet; Thomas Gould violin; Michael Atkinson cello; Richard Casey piano

The Quartet is a single movement for clarinet, violin, cello and piano featuring an elision of contrasting states - broad, lyrical and gliding surfaces, with pointed, highly articulated and rhythmically driven episodes. There are four raw materials in the Quartet - i) a six-note motif first played by the clarinet, violin and piano in unison in the first four bars, ii) descending semi-chromatic scale figures, iii) chains of minor thirds and semitones and iv) arpeggiated ostinato accompanimental figurations. These materials are energetically interwoven in ever different permutations in a constantly metamorphosing contrapuntal display. As in Hughes’s other works there is a relation with classical form, but it is a critical one and always guided, and sometimes eclipsed, by a fascination with polyphonic musical processes.

The Quartet was commissioned by London Sinfonietta with funds from the RVW Trust for the ‘State of the Nation’ concerts in February 1998.

Richard Casey (2012)

“tensile compression of the Quartet (1997) and its intensive interplay of four highly distinct ideas”

Richard Whitehouse, International Record Review, January 2013 on Dark Formations CD

“Cast in one compact movement lasting just under eight minutes, this concentrated work’s calm and lyrical surface is contrasted with pointed, rhythmic passages. Though the basic materials - most notably a descending semi-chromatic scalic figure - are relatively straightforward, Hughes weaves them into an increasingly intricate polyphonic web. His evident gift for contrapuntal textures is expressed with great economy”

Paul Conway, Tempo, August 2013 on Dark Formations CD