Stephen Johnson (b. 1955): String Quartet
Recorded at Kings Place, London, February 3rd 2022

Performers: The Brodsky Quartet
Krysia Osostowicz, violin
Ian Belton, violin
Paul Cassidy, viola
Jacqueline Thomas, cello

I. Allegretto cantabile - Più allegro -
II. (L’istesso tempo) - Presto -
III. Adagio -
IV. Allegro

The wonderful intimate, almost conversational dialogue of Joseph Haydn’s Quartets was a model for my own String Quartet. Throughout the four linked movements the four instruments are constantly bouncing ideas off each other, shadowing each other, responding to one another tenderly, violently, playfully, sometimes mockingly. As in the quartets of Beethoven and Shostakovich the listener may sense that the dialogue is happening not ‘out there’ in the real world, but in some private inner space – a space in which one can confront personal truths, and in the process perhaps find strength and a renewed sense of purpose.

In my case, it was the need to come to terms with loss, re-examine memories, and in so doing find a way to let go of painful attachments, that set me thinking of writing a string quartet. To my astonishment and delight I found that the ideas had a momentum of their own, leading through wistful, energetic and impassioned dance music (first movement) through caustic, black humour (Presto) to the desolate, elegiac Adagio third movement. From that desolation however something new arises: another dance movement, building eventually to an exultant, defiant, still dancing conclusion.

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