String Quartet No. 7

String Quartet No. 7, A. 435 (1942) I. Allegro II. Andante (10:25) III. Scherzo, allegro vivace (19:06) IV. Allegro giusto (25:10) Cuarteto Latinoamericano Heitor Villa-Lobos' String Quartet No. 7 is the pinnacle of his writing in the genre; the work is a giant in a number of senses. Compositionally, it projects for itself a tremendous amount of space in which to unfold: it is nearly 40 minutes long, a good deal more than any of the composer's other 16 quartets; and this commodiousness is well employed, endowing the work with an awesome unhurriedness. It is big, but not at all dense, and the quartet's complexity arises from its cumulative endurance rather than any intensive multi-layering or polyphonic web weaving. But the work is also Villa-Lobos' highest peak for the quartet's performers: it routinely demands great virtuosity from its players, particularly because they must pull off their tricks in keeping with the score's air of Olympian calm. The Borgerth Quartet, to whom the 1942 score was dedicated, perhaps testified to the work's difficulty by premiering it nearly three years later. The opening of the first-movement Allegro sets the tenor for the remainder of the work: it unfolds beautifully lazy fields of ninth and eleventh chords, its chromaticism anything but dissonant as it allows a violin melody to expansively fan out. But the massive development section (which uncharacteristically serves as the movement's final episode) truly pushes the instruments to their limits, contorting into strange and harmonically warped patterns. The following Andante is equally generous in scope: only after a rich and stratified accompaniment has been established does the cello begin its breathy, unrushed main melody; a middle section surges into the frame piu mosso, offering a contrast of contrapuntal networks and more adventurous chords. The scherzo third movement is something of a compositional study for Villa-Lobos; while the composer was quite distant from the Schoenberg-Bartók school of radical integration, here he seems eager to at least prove his abilities within his own means. Hence the piece entirely unfolds from the first motive of the opening theme; it is expanded, contracted, abbreviated, turned into the minor, even spelled backwards. The closing Allegro giusto overturns the first movement's melodic paradigms, instead primarily concentrating on rhythmic impulses while strange, whimsical gestures fuel wildly disparate episodes, each carefully marking it its own attitude. The movement is harmonically sewn together, however, by the loose method of superimposing intervals of a fourth. The rich, wide-open chords that arise perfectly sum up the unparalleled spaciousness of Villa-Lobos' most mansion-like quartet. [allmusic.com] Art by Luigi Veronesi