Tailleferre: String quartet

Day 98

Tailleferre: String quartet

Leipzig String Quartet

This continues my exploration of string quartets by moving across to France. The difference in style is immediate. The melodic shape is generally much simpler, the textures are more inventive and the harmonic language is more piquant. The work itself is curiously unbalanced. The first two movement are quite brief and as light as air. But the third movement is as long as the previous two movement put together and much more serious in tone - it is more dissonant and experiments with bitonality in places. I sense that this was not her natural style and that her real voice is to be heard in the first two movements, but the only other piece of hers I have heard is the harp concerto, so perhaps that is to oversimplify matters.

Tailleferre was of course one of Les Six. I’ve already covered Poulenc, Honneger and Durey in this series so it is just Milhaud and Auric to go. I will try to pick a piece by each of them over the next couple of days. There is a huge amount of Milhaud to go at, but Auric’s concert music is quite limited. Still there are some songs and perhaps I will explore them.