Phantasy Quartet Op.2 (1933)

Having won a Cobbett Chamber Music Prize for his Phantasy String Quartet in 1932, Britten was encouraged to complete another work in Cobbett’s favourite single-movement form, the Phantasy Quartet for oboe and strings. In this case the aim was not to win a13 guineas prize but to persuade Leon Goosses, its dedicatee, to perform it – which he duly did in a BBC broadcast in August 1933. The Phantasy Quartet is designed as a kind of palindrome beginning with a march progressing from silence to fortissimo and ending with the same march receding from fortissimo back into silence. Within that framework there are the exposition and development of a vigorous Allegro giusto, an Andante with episodes for a lyrical string trio and rhapsodic oboe, and an abbreviated recapitulation of the Allegro giusto. The structure is further secured by the fact that all the thematic material is derived from the tune introduced by the oboe over the marching tread of the strings in the opening section. If this seems excessively schematic, the dramatic articulation, the melodic inspiration and the expressive spontaneity of the work confirm that the young composer was not in the least inhibited by it.