String Quartet in F

arranged for string orchestra by Richard Tognetti (b 1965)

Allegro moderato, très doux

Assez vif, très rythmé - lent - assez vif

Très lent

Vif et agité

Between them – Debussy first in 1893 and Ravel ten years later – two young French composers transformed the sound of the string quartet. Their innovations were not entirely withour precedent: Grieg and Borodin had both, particularly the latter, indulged in string-quartet colour to an extent that was considered improper even in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Debussy and Ravel were uniquely successful, however, in combining a new concern for colour with the virtues, the contrapuntal interest and the structural integration, traditionally associated with the medium.

In the first movement of the Ravel’s Quartet in F, for example, the introduction of the second subject – on first violin and viola two octaves apart with tremolandos on second violin and plucked notes on the cello – is no less a structural event for the seductive way in which it is presented. The extensive and multi-coloured use of pizzicato in the second movement, the arpeggios passing from violin to viola and cello to accompany an expressive line on one or two other instruments in the slow movement, the obsessive tremolando scoring in quintuple time in the last, all these features and many more were something new or little explored for a string ensemble. They are also so memorable that, far from being obscured by them, the cyclic structure of the piece – with certain themes recurring from movement to movement – is illuminated by them.

Regretting that such sounds as these, conceived as they were for the string quartet (with no part for double bass), were denied them, Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra have devised arrangements of several works that would make them available to a larger body of strings. “With utmost respect for the composers' intentions,” they say, “we seek to explore and expand the chosen works, adding a further dimension to their character. The process is often a collaborative one to which the musicians of the orchestra and especially the bass player, contribute their ideas. This is a living process rather than a theoretical one, as we recreate the quartet in its new configuration, blending and illuminating elements and making changes as we go along. It's best for listeners to come without preconceived ideas – to experience the arrangements with fresh ears, as if hearing a work for the first time, which in some sense they are.”

Vif et agité

It is one of the ironies of musical history that only four years after César Franck, at the very end of his life, had succeeded in creating the first great French string quartet, a French composer less than half his age wrote a better one. Debussy’s Quartet in G minor was not immediately acknowledged as the masterpiece it is - Eugène Ysaÿe, whose quartet gave the first performance in 1893, confessed to understanding not a note of it - but Maurice Ravel, a still younger composer, had no doubts about its significance and most success­fully emulated it in his own Quartet in F ten years later. The consolation for Franck would have been that Debussy and Ravel were so aware of his paternity in this particular area that they were both conscientious in adopting the cyclic method of construction so closely associated with him.

Unlike Franck, both Debussy and Ravel looked beyond the French and German traditions for new sounds - to Scandinavia, Russia, and beyond. Debussy’s debts to Grieg and Borodin in his Quartet in G minor are clear enough. As for Ravel’s debt to Debussy in his Quartet in F, it is to be heard in the scoring (not least in the gamelan-like pizzicato of the second movement), in the harmonies (not least in occasional presence of whole-tone elements) and perhaps even in the shape of the opening theme, which is anticipated in Debussy’s first movement. Apart from that there is a shared attitude to the cyclic principles they inherited from Franck: they both avoided the drama he made out of his thematic cross-references, choosing instead to make the same structural point in a rather more subtle way.

Both the main themes of Ravel’s first movement - the supple melody on first violin in the opening bars and the tenderly expressive second subject introduced by violin and viola in intimate octaves - have a long-term function. In the meantime, however, they are so thoroughly integrated with each other that it is sometimes difficult to tell them apart. As soon as the triplet figure of the second subject is established as its salient feature, the first theme combines with it, winding itself round it at several levels of the texture. In the accelerating approach to the central climax of the movement the first subject actually appropriates the triplet figure to itself, contriving a common identity that seems to be confirmed in the lingering coda

The second subject of the Allegro moderato supplies the thematic basis for both elements of the Assez vif scherzo, which is a brilliantly realised confrontation of percussive pizzicato material in 6/8 and legato melody in 3/4. The slow middle section introduces an eloquent new theme on cello in 3/4 which, at the very centre of the movement, is transformed into a broad 4/4 in octaves on first violin in ingenious counterpoint with a much slowed-down version of the pizzicato material in triple stops on second violin.

If the presence of the first theme of the Allegro moderato is not completely clear in the viola part at the beginning of the Très lent it certainly is before the end of that movement. The stabbing figuration of the opening bars and curiously remote echoes of the main theme in its original shape more than once interrupt the generous lyrical impulse of the viola. There is more opportunity for extended melodic development in the middle section, which achieves a climax of orchestral dimensions before meeting with another remote echo of the main theme at the beginning of a varied reprise of the first section.

The fierce tremolandos in 5/8 at the beginning of the last movement postulate an aggressively alien element. They give way to a more urbane exposition of two melodies - both introduced on first violin - that are not difficult to recognize as variants of the two main themes of the first movement, in spite of the fact that one is presented in quintuple time and the other in triple time. Out of their true metrical character, however, and subject to continued alien aggression, they are not strong enough to survive: they are eventually swept away in a rush of quintuple and chromatic activity which seems to end on an F major chord only by accident.

Gabriel Fauré - Ravel’s teacher at the Paris Conservatoire and dedicatee of the work - judged the last movement too short and unsatisfactory in construction. Debussy, who was still on good terms with Ravel at this time, implored him not to change of note of it.