Britten: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94

Britten returned to the string quartet form after a thirty-year hiatus, when, as one critic [Peter Evans] suggests, he realized he was truly running out of time. The resulting work, whose finale looks back to themes from his previous compositions, particularly Death in Venice, reads musically as a meditation on his life by way of his compositions. Although the last quartet is not significantly shorter than his other two string quartets, it is noteworthy that the opening movement, entitled ‘Duets,’ does not follow classical sonata-allegro form. Evans is reluctant to make Britten’s illness wholly accountable for this deviation from traditional form, but he does question whether ‘the short spans of activity to which the composer was restricted during the years of his illness necessitated this reduction of scale’.

But absolutely no one saw here any late failing on the creative level: in one of the earliest reviews, David Matthews called it ‘a masterpiece’; the New Grove claims that ‘few listeners will doubt that this is as profound a work as anything Britten wrote’; Kennedy puts it on par with Beethoven’s late string quartets; and Evans concludes that ‘the simplicity of its language and the serenity to which it aspires represent a distillation, not a dilution, of Britten’s expressivity during this most poignant period of his life,’ calling the last movement of the quartet ‘surely his last artistic testament’.

—Kimberly Fairbrother Canton, et al., Death in Venice and Beyond: Benjamin Britten’s Late Works, 2012

This work was performed on the first concert of PCMS' Departure & Discovery Project at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater.