Carlo Martelli – String Quartet No. 1 in C, Opus 1

This is the composer’s first acknowledged work and was written when he was only 17 years of age and a first year student at the Royal College of Music.  The Pavão Quartet recorded this work in August 2012 on the CD Carlo Martelli, released in October 2013 by Discadia Records, DISCA 002. Included on the same CD, and also published by Broadbent & Dunn, are Martelli’s String Quartet No. 2, Prelude and Fugue for String Sextet and Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola.

Review: “String Quartet No. 1, Opus 1 (1953) is Carlo Martelli’s earliest acknowledged work. An outstandingly mature utterance from a 17 year old composer, it reflects the richly diverse formative influences he had already encountered and shows his ability to absorb those influences thoroughly within a distinctly individual voice. Especially discernible in the quartets flowing, rich textures and predominantly diatonic, occasionally modal, themes is a love of late-Renaissance music fostered by Bernard Stevens, whose own studies with E.J.Dent and R.O.Morris had given him a thorough grounding in Tudor polyphony. Establishing the chiefly lyrical tone of the work, the opening movement introduces its principal subject at the outset – an introductory statement on cello marked semplice, followed by an answering phrase on viola. Martelli’s own instrument also inaugurates the impassioned second subject, which starts with a descending chromaticised motif. These two main ideas are then elaborated separately until the very closing bars, when they are finally heard in combination. There follows a fleet-footed scherzo in which the main and central ‘trio’ sections both contain two highly contrasting but subtly inter related ideas. The richly contrapuntal slow movement ends in a brief cadenza like episode for first violin, ushering in the finales eloquent main theme.  Martelli had just head, and been greatly impressed by, a recording of Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet and some of that great Russian chamber works. essential simplicity, serenity and avoidance of empty rhetoric is reflected in this almost wholly euphonious closing movement. Just when the players seem to be settling into a state of repose, the first violin suddenly bursts in, launching a brilliant Presto coda, pity and waspish.  String Quartet No. 1 was played by the Quartet Pro Musica in a BBC broadcast on 21st March 1959. It was recently dedicated to the Pavão Quartet.” – Paul Conway for Discadia Records, 2013

Biography

Martelli, Carlo

Carlo Martelli was born on the 12th December 1935 in London to an Italian father and an English mother. By the age of eleven Carlo had developed a passion for the symphony orchestra. Just before his twelfth birthday he started taking regular violin lessons and very soon began writing elaborate orchestral scores achieving a mastery in this field by the age of sixteen, by which time he had obtained a County Scholarship to attend the Royal College of Music in London, studying composition and viola. By the time he was 21 he had written a string quartet and had already had a great deal of success with several large scale serious symphonic compositions, notably his Second Symphony, which had many performances and broadcasts by several major orchestras in the few years after its completion. In the 1960's he turned to film music to make a living, and also worked steadily as a freelance viola player. His arrangements for string quartet, trio and other combinations number well over 250 and are played by hundreds of groups all over the world.