Panufnik - String Quartet nr. 2 'Messages' & nr. 3 'Wycinanki'

Panufnik is a composer that is difficult fathom. He seems to be Janus-faced. On the one side we hear a composer who is able and eager to please with a colourful and accessible idiom that, sometimes, flirts with sentimentality. I'm primarily thinking of some of his 'spiritual' pieces, such as the slow movement of the Sinfonia Sacra, in which he beautifully captures the simple but ardent devotion (particularly for the Virgin Mary) that must have been endemic in the Poland of yore. The other side is that of a watchmaker, obsessed with fitting every bar within a larger whole that is often based on a very arcane, geometrically-inspired design. His Arbor Cosmica is a good example of the kind of almost impenetrable, austere music that can emerge from that infatuation with rigid architecture. This dualism seems to be mirrored in this persona: on the one hand a social climber (Sir ...), and a little vain, on the other hand a scrupulously honest, hardworking and uncompromising artist.

Panufnik wrote three quartets (1976, 1980, 1991, respectively). The Second is named 'Messages'. The story is this:

"When I was seven or eight years old, on holiday in the country, my favourite pastime was to put my ear to the wooden telegraphy poles and listen to the sounds produced by the poles vibrating in the wind. After a while I became convinced that I was listening to real music - which retrospectively I think was my first experience of the creative process, as for the first time I made use of my musical imagination."

The result is, however, a little less poetic than the background might lead us to expect. 'Messages' sounds to me rather like an academic exercise than a recreation of a visceral childhood memory. The beginning is quite evocative, with a wistful four note motive emerging from ppp harmonics on unisono strings (very similar to the opening of Bryars' Second Quartet, by the way). This four note cell is complemented with a three note motif and from this modest material Panufnik builds a rigid scaffolding for the single movement, 19 minute long composition. It's not that the music is bad. It just sounds a little dry and schoolmasterish. The ubiquity of the two cells lends the music also a certain rhythmic inflexibility. Bernard Jacobson makes a bogus claim in the booklet notes that 'if there is an earlier composer to the listener's mind in relation to the drooping chromaticism of the main theme, it is Bartok.' Anyway, I listened to it twice and in both cases the piece failed to keep my attention until the very end.

The Third Quartet, however, is a good deal more interesting. Again there is a story:

'The quartet emerged from my lifelong attachment to the rustic art of Poland, especially the paper cuts ('wycinanki') symmetrical designs of magical abstract beauty and naive charm.' 

So the 10 minute work, written as a test piece for a quartet competition, consists of five linked miniature studies. The first connects to the slow beginning of previous quartet, with hovering, vibratoless music. The second is warmly lyrical and songful. The third is a study in pizzicato playing. The fourth is an agressive scherzo, with unisono, pounding strings (reminded me of his countryman Gorecki's First Quartet, by the way). And the last part is one of those richly harmonised, devotional Lentos Panufnik seems to have a trademark on. Despite its modest origins, this quartet is solid workmanship that bears repeated listening.