Alan Bush: Dialectic

Day 362

Alan Bush: Dialectic

Aeolian Quartet

Alan Bush is remembered as much for his communist associations as for his music. All four of his full length operas were given their first performance in East Germany. I love the story - which I think is true - that after the first performance of his piano concerto, which ends with a chorus singing revolutionary Leninist texts, the conductor Adrian Boult immediately launched the orchestra into the national anthem in order to stop the applause of the mainly left-wing audience!

Dialectic was the piece which made Bush’s reputation. It was written in 1929 and achieve international recognition when it was performed at the Prague festival in the 1930s.  It is about as far from agit-prop as you can imagine. It is a serious one-movement work for string quartet which explores at length an opening motive which permeates the whole piece. It is largely contrapuntal and has moments of tremendous rhythmic energy. It is unlike most of the inter-war British music that I know. The composer who most comes to mind is Tippett, but in 1929 Tippett was still finding his feet musically and any influence there is is in the other direction, something Tippett himself acknowledged.

This was a very old recording transferred from 78s (there are modern recordings but this one is on YouTube with the score) and so so of the details were probably a bit muddy. But it certainly was good enough to show that this is fine piece which deserves to be part of the quartet repertory.