British String Quartets

This boxed set is excellent value for money. A few of the works - e.g. Elgar's Piano Quintet - are well known. Most are not, but fully deserve to be. Thanks to pioneering recordings like these, two things should now be impossible. (1) Continental Europeans will never again be able to repeat the silly and ignorant gibe that Britain is ''das Land ohne Musik''. (2) British music lovers need never again suffer from an inferiority complex in comparison with our European neighbours. Many thanks to the Maggini Quartet for bringing these treasures to light and for their committed performances. An absolute joy!

Excellent collection a mixture of well known and nor so well known and a great price

Arrived quickly in good condition. A great set from the Maggini Quartet.

The Maggini Quartet are a superb ensemble and the sound for these discs is generally very fine. The main problem here is that the buyer will not know what the music is. No composer listings, or what works are contained in the box, only meaningless track listings. It is a problem often encountered on AMAZON and a MAJOR FAILING. Take a chance by all means, but it is bad business practice to not be more explicit about the product.

This is a wonderful set. Amazon have evidently decided nobody needs to know what's actually on the set, so here's a list. All of the discs are separately available Naxos releases and could be purchased individually for far more money. You get a brochure with (I presume) the original liner notes for each disc, and the original artwork for the releases are on the sleeves of the individual discs. ALWYN, W.: String Quartets Nos. 1-3 / Novelette (Maggini Quartet) 8.570560 ARNOLD, M.: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 / Phantasy, "Vita Abundans" (Maggini Quartet) 8.557762 BAX, A.: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 (Maggini Quartet) 8.555282 BAX, A.: String Quartet No. 3 / Lyrical Interlude (Maggini Quartet, G. Jackson) 8.555953 BERKELEY, L.: String Quartets Nos. 1-3 (Maggini Quartet) 8.570415 BLISS, A.: String Quartet No. 1 / Conversations / String Quartet in A Major (N. Daniel, M. Cox, Maggini Quartet) 8.557108 BLISS, A.: Clarinet Quintet / String Quartet No. 2 (D. Campbell, Maggini Quartet) 8.557394 BRIDGE, F.: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 3 (Maggini Quartet) 8.557133 BRIDGE, F.: String Quartets Nos. 2 and 4 / Phantasie Piano Quartet (Maggini Quartet, Roscoe) 8.557283 BRIDGE, F.: Phantasie Quartet / Novelletten / 3 Idylls / Short Pieces (Maggini Quartet) 8.553718 BRITTEN, B.: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 / 3 Divertimenti (Maggini Quartet) 8.553883 BRITTEN, B.: String Quartet No. 3 / Simple Symphony (Maggini Quartet) 8.554360 ELGAR, E.: String Quartet in E Minor / Piano Quintet in A Minor (Donohoe, Maggini Quartet) 8.553737 IRELAND, J.: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 / The Holy Boy (Maggini Quartet) 8.557777 MOERAN, E.J.: String Quartets / String Trio (Maggini Quartet) 8.554079 RAWSTHORNE, A.: String Quartets Nos. 1-3 / Theme and Variations (Maggini Quartet) 8.570136 RUBBRA, E.: String Quartets Nos. 1, 3 and 4 (Maggini Quartet) 8.572555 RUBBRA, E.: String Quartet No. 2 / Amoretti / Ave Maria Gratia Plena / Piano Trio in 1 Movement (C. Daniels, Roscoe, Maggini Quartet) 8.572286 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, R.: Phantasy Quintet / String Quartets Nos. 1, 2 (G. Jackson, Maggini Quartet) 8.555300 WALTON, W.: String Quartet / Piano Quartet (Donohoe, Maggini Quartet) 8.554646I'm still exploring all the wonderful music on this set in full, but it's unearthed a host of delights already, not necessarily where I'd expected to find them: I've found the contributions by Bliss, and the second quartets by Arnold and Ireland, to be fantastic pieces of music, despite not having much of an opinion of Ireland or Arnold in particular. The Second Malcolm Arnold quartet was so good it made me want to give the compsoser -who I'd previously written off - another chance. This is serious modern chamber music, shorn of the banal ditties that plague so much of Arnold's output. Whilst the Bliss quartets are fairly conventionally romantic, they're no less stirring or exciting for that. The contributions by the bigger names like Britten and Vaughan Williams have not dissapointed either.Inevitably, with a set of this kind there are weaker moments: I don't find a lot to recommend yet in the contributions by some of the other lesser names, like Alwyn, Berkeley, and Rawsthorne, and some of the smaller pieces included from Britten, Bridge and Rubbra just seem like filler compared to the same composers' numbered Quartets. But Naxos have always focused on cataloguing composers' ouvre in completion, and this is no bad thing, and I wouldn't have listend to Malcolm Arnold or John Ireland's 2nd quartets if they weren't on this set, so I can hardly begrudge Alwyn or Berkeley the chance to be heard.Quibbles are slight, and mostly mitigated, but given all fourteen composers featured are English, this isn't really a set of British string quartets but rather English ones (WIlliam Mathias and Daniel Jones both wrote fine string quartets so there's no shortage of Welsh candidates at least); if you're not going to include non-English composers why not call it what it is is? Otherwise, the choice of composers has a couple of gaps, although in Naxos's defence, the set is a collection of the Maggini Quartet's recordings on the label, recordings which weren't necessarily originally intendedand to form a coherent set. The absence of Michael Tippett's string quartets (available on Naxos, but not by the Maggini quartet) means this isn't quite the definitive collection of English string quartets, and it's a shame they couldn't have included any string quartets by a woman (e.g. Elizabeth Maconchy) - though again, the set is a collection of pre-existing recordings, so that presumably wasn't an option. Still, these are pretty minor quibbles in what's a great value set. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in English music of the 20th century, or the string quartet as a genre.

Not going to spend £48 for Cd set when there is no list of what is on them!!!!