Two Pieces: Movement - Copland
American Dreams - Peter Schickele
Quartet - Barber Sextet
The most obviously American item in the Vanbrugh Quartet's Globetrotting No. 6 - the USA - was Peter Schickele's String Quartet No. 1, American Dreams. While making use of cowboy song, jazz rhythms, blues and barn dance, styles not immediately associated with the string quartet, it had the air of sending them all up, as well as mocking the classical tradition. The Vanbrugh played it with serious attention, not overstating its oozily sentimental harmonies nor diminishing its liveliness and allowing the part for pizzicato cello in the first movement to stand out as a show-piece. This was music for fun, destined for instant popularity.
Copland, who might be considered the originator of this kind of music, showed in his Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet (1939), adapted from his Symphony No. 2 (1933), a much more forceful and hard-edged side to his personality than might have been guessed from his ballet scores. The Vanbrugh, joined by Michael Collins (clarinet) and Martin Roscoe (piano), played it energetically, imbuing it with a nervous equilibrium. The clarinet part had a very important role in "Americanising" the traditional line-up of piano and four strings and Michael Collins gave the music a lift.
Barber's Quartet, the least American work on the programme, for it could be attributed to some composer from central Europe, was the most demanding. The interest does not lie on the surface but is diffused throughout the texture and it seems to express a philosophy.
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