Front Cover


Inside Front Cover


Sonata


Passacaglia


Sonata da Capo


Lindsay String Quartet (1985)
Peter Cropper, violin;
Ronald Birks, violin;
Robin Ireland, viola;
Bernard Gregor-Smith, 'cello
(for this recording, the viola player is Roger Bigley)





Original Manuscript

Lindsays CD

6th Krakow Festival of Polish Music, November 6, 2010

www.polskamuza.eu review by Malgorzata Czech (in Polish)

Dorota Szwarcman
Music Critic for Polityka
(Polish newsmagazine)

Warsaw, August 18, 2015

String Quartet No. 2 in C (1973-1975) - Opus 5
This webpage provides information about the André Tchaikowsky String Quartet No. 2 in C (1973-1975) - Opus 5. This includes music links and then text that lists all known details regarding this composition from the book, The Other Tchaikowsky - A Biographical Sketch of André Tchaikowsky.

Here are two brief audio clips of a radio program "A Study in Contrast" about André Tchaikowsky and his string quartets. For the entire BBC radio program, see the Miscellaneous link above. Voices for the following: David Owen Norris, Peter Cropper

Lindsay Quartet meets André / contrast_lindsay.mp3

Lindsay Quartet mentions the quartets / contrast_quartets.mp3

(2015) Friends of Music (Florence, Italy) / Meccorre String Quartet
The Friends of Music in Florence, Italy hosted a concert on December 6th, 2015 that featured the String Quartet No. 2 played by the Meccorre String Quartet. The concert was held at the historic Teatro della Pergola. Click Here to read more (in Italian). The members of the quartet were:

Wojciech Koprowski – Violin
Jaroslaw Nadrzycki – Violin
Michal Bryla – Viola
Karol Marianowski – Cello

Meccorre String Quartet (Photo: A. Berbecki)

(2015) Chopin and his Europe Music Festival / Meccorre String Quartet
The 2015 version of the excellent Chopin and his Europe Music Festival in Warsaw, Poland included a stunning performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by the Meccorre String Quartet. The members of the quartet were:

Wojciech Koprowski – Violin
Jaroslaw Nadrzycki – Violin
Michal Bryla – Viola
Karol Marianowski – Cello

See the images below for scenes from the concert and pages from the program. Almost immediately after this performance, the Meccorre String Quartet headed to Belfast, N. Ireland for a repeat performance and other works. Click Here for more information regarding the Belfast concerts. Click Here for a news article (in English).

Shortly after this concert, the Meccorre played the 2nd String Quartet again at St. Conal’s Church in Donegal, Ireland at part of the Casimir Concerts season. Click Here for additional information and Click Here for the PDF program (page 12).

(2015) Live Performance / Meccorre String Quartet
As part of the 2015 Q'arto Mondi 6th International Chamber Music Festival, the Meccorre String Quartet (website) played the Andrzej Czajkowski String Quartet No. 2. The members of the quartet were:

Wojciech Koprowski – Violin
Jaroslaw Nadrzycki – Violin
Michal Bryla – Viola
Karol Marianowski – Cello

This live performance is now on Vimeo (Click Here).

(2013) Bregenz Festival
The 2nd of the "Music and Poetry" concerts for the 2013 Bregenz Festival featured the Meccorre String Quartet (website). Their program included the playing of André's 2nd String Quartet. Members for this concert were Michal Bryla viola, Karol Marianowski cello, Wojciech Koprowski violin, and Magdalena Makowska violin.

(2004) Camerata Quartet
The 2004 performace is by the Camerata Quartet (Kwartet Camerata in Polish). The occasion was the 7th Polish Radio Music Festival and the performance was in the Polish Radio Szymanowski Hall. Click Here for their website in English, or Click Here for their website in Polish.

Wlodzimierz Prominski - first violin, Andrzej Kordykiewicz - second violin,
Piotr Reichert - viola, Roman Hoffmann - cello

Complete / 00_op5_strng_qrt2_complete_2004.mp3
Sonata / 01_op5_strng_qrt2_1st_2004.mp3
Passacaglia / 02_op5_strng_qrt2_2nd_2004.mp3
Sonata da Capo / 03_op5_strng_qrt2_3rd_2004.mp3

Music/MP3 (1978)
The following performance is the world premiere recording from January 23, 1978, which also appears on a Lindsay Quartet CD to celebrated their 25th anniversary. This CD is on the Academy Sound and Visions (ASV) label, CD #DCA 825.

Peter Cropper - First violin, Ronald Birks - Second violin,
Roger Bigley - viola, Bernard Gregor-Smith - cello

Introduction / 00_op5_introduction.mp3

Complete / op5_strng_qrt2_complete.mp3
Sonata / 01_op5_strng_qrt2_1st.mp3
Passacaglia / 02_op5_strng_qrt2_2nd.mp3
Sonata da Capo / 03_op5_strng_qrt2_3rd.mp3

This performance is on YouTube. Click Here (opens new window)

Annette Morreau reviewed the Lindsay CD for BBC Music magazine:

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, in a typically imaginative gesture, the Lindsay String Quartet has brought out a CD of four 20th-century works, all ‘live’ performances. The works by André Tchaikowsky and Hugh Wood (both written for the Lindsays and here in world premiere recordings) are less of an easy listen. The Polish-born pianist and composer André Tchaikowsky left only seven compositions when he died tragically in 1982 at the age of 46. The elegiac Passacaglia of this quartet brings full-blooded, passionate playing, a Lindsay characteristic, while Hugh Wood’s third quartet, a gritty, complex single movement brings out the Lindsays’ remarkable range of instrumental colour, intensity of feeling and vigorous attack. A highly welcome anniversary disc.

Peter Marchbank reviewed this CD for Gramophone magazine:

The disc reveals the wide musical interests of the Lindsay Quartet. While their cycles of the quartets of Beethoven, Bartok and Tippett are well-known, here — with the exception of the Adagio from Barber's Second Quartet — they are playing music which is little-known but in which they firmly believe.

Andre Tchaikowsky's Second Quartet was recorded in 1978 when the composer was still alive. Although better known as a fine concert-pianist, his small output of compositions (there is, I know, a particularly striking Piano Concerto) has attracted considerable critical attention. His Second Quartet is a passionate and lyrical work in three movements which are played without a break. The central Passacaglia is a wonderfully haunting movement which reminds us not only of the composer's Polish background but of his love for the music of Beethoven and Bartok.

Music (2010)
A performance of the 2nd quartet took place on November 6, 2010 as part of the 6th Krakow Festival of Polish Music by the Meccore String Quartet.

Wojciech Koprowski - first violin, Magdalena Makowska - second violin,
Michal Bryla - viola, and Karol Marianowski - cello [Photo 2013]
(For the Krakow performance, second violin was Aleksandra Tomasinska)

Of the November 6, 2010 concert, Malgorzata Czech wrote for www.polskamuza.eu:

Andrzej Czajkowski music was his fate - full of pain and loneliness. It is also music very well thoughtout and composed with mathematical precision. Polyphony is a dominant texture of this music of pain and loneliness, which could tear apart the soul of the listener, plus it put enormous technical requirements on the performers. Yesterdays monographic concert at the Jagiellonian University’s Collegium Novum brought a level of performance equal to the level of Andrzej Czajkowski's composing skills - Masterful.

These wonderful artists of the younger generation - Meccore String Quartet - composed of Wojciech Koprowski (violin), Aleksandra Tomasinska (violin), Michal Bryla (viola), and Karol Marianowski (cello) played the Second Quartet String cleanly with precision and with perfect synchronization, all within a mutual sense of spontaneity.

Music Publisher
This work is published by Josef Weinberger and appears in their catalog of André Tchaikowsky published works. Click Here for a PDF copy of the André Tchaikowsky Weinberger catalog.

From the biography The Other Tchaikowsky
It took André more than two years to write his String Quartet No. 2, a work of about 20 minutes in performance. Eventually it was dedicated to the Lindsay String Quartet, the excellent musicians who premiered André's String Quartet No.1 (Opus 3); the initial dedication was again to Stefan Askenase, this time for his 80th birthday (the String Quartet No. 1 was dedicated to Stefan Askenase for his 75th birthday). André wrote his own program notes for the Quartet No. 2:

In July 1971, the Lindsay Quartet gave the first performance of my first quartet and immediately suggested I write another. I was flattered by the request and eager to show my gratitude. But I could think of nothing more to say in the medium and was afraid of repeating myself, so I merely promised to think about it.

Some months later, I heard the Lindsay Quartet play the Shostakovich sixth quartet. The slow movement of that work is a simple and beautiful passacaglia, a form I should never have dared to attempt in a string quartet for fear of boring the ·cellist. Bernard Gregor-Smith suggested a passacaglia with a varied bass, and this immediately helped to focus my ideas. Even then, the cellist was still restricted to going 'round in circles,' so I decided to compensate in the outer movements by giving him conspicuous and flamboyant solos.

The next logical step was to extend the concertante treatment to the other players. This at once allayed my fears of producing an identical twin of my first quartet, in which my chief aim had been a close knit truly chamber texture, and I now relished all the display I had denied myself before: high positions, single and double harmonics, quick alternations or arcato and pizzicato, and so on. It was quite a surprise that, with all of this, the new quartet is easier than the first.

Dynamically, the work is shaped like a 'V.' The first movement is a rapid, tense sonata, which calms down towards the end to set the mood for the somber passacaglia. The last movement is a continuous accelerando. As its speed increases, so does the resemblance to the first movement from which it is derived.

To help the Lindsay prepare for the performance, André went to their location in Sheffield and assisted with the rehearsals. Only a few changes to the Finale were required. Everything went well and André reported to Halina Wahlmann-Janowska:

"I didn't need to give the Lindsay any advice, as they understood the piece perfectly well and only needed a bit more practice in a few small places. The most pleasant thing is they like this new quartet even more than the first one, although they liked that one too. I'm curious to know the general reaction, although I'm not going to break down if nobody goes along with the performers' opinion."

The Lindsay gave the first performance of String Quartet No.2 at St. John's, Smith Square, London, on January 23, 1978. The performance was broadcast by the BBC. A critical review by Paul Griffiths in The Musical Times included:

The Tchaikowsky quartet is a work of intense passions forced into a symmetrical argument around a passacaglia slow movement. Its style, situated somewhere between the middle Bart6k quartets and Berg's Lyric Suite, sounds genuine; the writing for string quartet is certainly so, with none of the awkwardness or hesitancy one might expect of a pianist-composer. But I find it difficult to warm to second-hand histrionics.

Another review by Arthur Jacobs in The Daily Telegram:

For those who, like myself, were as yet unacquainted with André Tchaikowsky as a composer, yesterday's premiere of his Second String Quartet made an agreeable impression. Here is a craftsmanlike composer able to turn old forms to individual advantage.

Born in Warsaw in 1935, Mr. Tchaikowsky has lived in this country since 1960, and has pursed an admired career as pianist. He is shortly to give a solo recital in this same BBC Monday lunch-time series which brought the Lindsay String Quartet to perform his new work. Their command of the music and their sympathy with it were evident, and Bernard Gregor-Smith's decisive 'cello solos were particularly eloquent.

The BBC presentation was not so happy. Presumably some producer writes or supervises the introductions before they are handed to an announcer [Patricia Hughes] for that plummy-voiced, holier-than-thou delivery which has rightly been ousted from almost all other radio and TV programmes. The only two things necessary for the listener to know about Mr. Tchaikowsky's quartet were its approximate length (20 minutes) and the fact that its three movements are played without a break. Neither was announced, and instead we had the inexactitude that the last movement was to be 'a continuous accelerando.'

The three movements follow a traditional sequence -- forthright, contemplative, agitated. The middle one is a passacaglia (owing inspiration to Shostakovich's Sixth Quartet, the composer says) which manages considerable intensity and never lets the repeated bass pattern become tedious. The first movement, thanks to strong internal contrasts, grips the ear immediately; the finale speaks in a more wayward and recondite fashion, but entices to further acquaintance.

The Lindsay Quartet remembers:

"We love André's quartets. We love the music, especially the second quartet. It has some incredible textures and is very difficult music. We would like to keep it in our repertoire, but it's not an easy prospect as it takes a lot of work."

After only a few performances, the Lindsay had to put the work aside in favor other repertoire. Weinberger Ltd. published the quartet in 1980.

The Lindsay Quartet also plays String Quartet No.1 (1973-1975) - Opus 3.