BRITTEN: Phantasy Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello - Chamberfest Cleveland 

A very well played Britten Quartet. Thank to the Quartet!!

Britten was a mere 19 when he composed this highly original work, dedicated to oboist Eugene Goossens but with the score being given to his long time teacher Frank Bridge. The 'fantasy quartet' (sometimes "phantasie" with reference to Purcell) was a British trend in the early 20th century which allowed for odd mixtures of instruments. Vaughan Williams wrote a fantasy quintet pre-WW1. Because the UK was not in step with Continental trends in extended chamber music but there were many excellent soloists who had learned how play with string ensembles in the music colleges quite a lot were written. Britten's Op.2 is very disciplined and seemingly in conventional arch form but is harmonically complex, "modern", has musical quotes from Bridge, Berg, Prokofiev and Ravel but it does not imitate their styles yet brings something new into the music of the time, which developed rapidly in the larger orchestral and vocal works which are more familiar and stand the test of time. Britten notably liked the possibilities of the oboe and cor anglais in larger works for a cutting but full sound and very different harmonics from clarinets. His much later solo oboe 'Ovid Metamorphises' explores this further and it is said that he woke up to the oboe family via Mahler, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The musicians here are first class and know the seldom performed 'master piece' ,in the literal and historical sense of the term, inside out. Others stumble but these musicians do not.

Beautiful!!!