Ronald Read – Samba for Strings (String Quartet) – Score Digital Download

This sixth string quartet is in six sections, played almost without a break. Begun in 1987 the work was subsequently abandoned, then restarted in 1990 and completed in May 1992. Premiered at the Cheltenham Music Festival. For professionals and advanced students.

This quartet was written in 1954 when the composer, Carlo Martelli, was a 19 year old student at the Royal College of Music. This publication is of a recent revision of the work. There are three distinct sets of ideas in the first movement which are freely developed, although vestiges of sonata form can be discerned. The second movement is a scherzo and trio, which is joined without a break to the slow third movement - an interesting feature of this conjunction, is that at the close of the slow movement ideas from the trio and then the scherzo return to round things off. The last movement is a succession of free variations on a theme in which the interval of a fourth predominates. For conservatories and professionals.

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. 1, Prelude and Fugue for String Sextet Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola.

The result of a commission by the Rugby Sinfonia in 1984, this string quartet version of Allegro Risotto is an ambitious one movement work that contrasts lively, energetic sections (containing exciting rhythms and occasional unequal bar lengths) with calmer, more lyrical passages.