Isolated recordings of works by the mysterious Arthur Lourie have for a while been whetting some appetites, mine certainly included, for a more comprehensive examination of him. Here it is, and it could hardly be more intriguing. Until his own music began to emerge (or to re-emerge: his pieces had some currency in the 1920s and 1930s) he was known, if at all, for having been Commissar of Music during the immediately post-revolutionary phase in Soviet Russia and, later, for being first very close to Stravinsky, then unmentionable in his presence (it seems that he may have intrigued against Stravinsky’s second wife).
There is not much of the Soviet Union (a momentary hint of Prokofiev, perhaps) and not much more of Stravinsky in these three absorbingly odd quartets. Indeed the most striking thing about them is their remarkable range of musical imagery and the sheer rapidity with which Lourie was developing over the mere three years that they span. The First Quartet is a big, half-hour piece, packed with vividly imaginative ideas which are, however, for the most part simply juxtaposed, with little or no sense of progression, let alone development. The language is basically lyrical, and becomes more expressive as the work continues, but Lourie rarely allows any key to register for long. One idea will suggest another to him, a brief unifying motive may emerge, but again not for long. At times there is an odd sort of resemblance to Janacek, but the overall impression is of a gifted composer pouring ideas on to paper and hoping that sheer urgency will hold the result together. It does, after a fashion; there is a sort of movement from rather aggressive discontinuity to longer, even graceful line. But it could, one feels, just as well have lasted twice or half as long.
The Second Quartet is a bizarre development from this. Dense textures open to reveal a demure little tune, which becomes quite jovial before plainer harmonies and a hint of Stravinskian neo-classicism lead to a return of the opening and some curious recollections of pre-classical music, to which spiky dissonances are added as an almost dismissive coda. It is all over in a single movement of eight minutes. The Third Quartet, only a year later, begins with two juxtaposed ideas, but now they are genuinely worked together into an oddly gripping two-minute (!) “Prelude”, which is followed by a grave “Chorale”, an urgently serious “Hymn” and a shadowed “Funeral March”, fraught with harmonic tension. Where all this is leading seems to be the brief, epigrammatic “Duo”, the music now pared down to essentials (two-part inventions, mostly) and clearly revealing either roots in or deep nostalgia for Russian folk music.
The fine Utrecht players are obviously fascinated by this music, and they play it for all it is worth. And how much is that? Rather a lot, I think: Lourie was obviously a provoking and imaginative creative mind, and a real original. The recordings are excellent.'