Bax, Bantock, Gardiner, Davis & Davies: Works for String Quartet

The English composer Arnold Bax discovered the poetry of the Irishman William Butler Yeats during his studies at the Royal Academy of Music and from then on became enthusiastic about Ireland and Celtic culture. Secluded in a small village in Donegal in the northwest of the Emerald Isle, he wrote his String Quartet in E Major, which remained unpublished during his lifetime, but whose second movement formed the basis for Bax’s first symphonic poem, “Cathaleen-ni-Hoolihan,” which appeared after he completed his studies in 1905. Along with four other discoveries of English string quartet literature of the period, the Tippett Quartet presents the first complete recording of the Bax work.