Edinburgh Quartet

The three remarkable works on the Meridian disc show what a highly distinctive and individual contribution Kenneth Leighton made to English chamber music in the mid-20th century. They were written over 13 years, the Piano Quintet of 1959 immediately establishing the composer's concentrated polyphonic style and the structural unity of his writing. The first movement allegro develops a restless theme growing out of just four notes, which will return in the finale, presented slowly and evocatively as a basis for an diverse passacaglia. In between come an elegiac Adagio sostenuto and an irrepressible scherzo, which is later to be underpinned by a recurring cantabile string melody.

The Piano Trio of 1965 is, if anything, even more concentrated in its sinewy melancholy lyricism and restless energy, with the piano often throbbing percussively against the strings. Leighton's mastery of horizontal polyphony has the three instruments each making their individual progress, yet with the part-writing still fitting together vertically at every moment. There is a constant flux between dissonance and consonance, the music alternatively driven by markings of feroce...tutta forza and able to suddenly relax into calm, as at the end of the first movement and the seraphically sustained final Hymn. In between (as in the Quintet), the nervous intensity is heightened by a precipitous, syncopated Scherzo, fiendishly driven which reintroduces the opening theme of the first movement.

The single-movement quartet, Contrasts and Variants of 1972, surely sums up the emotional concentration of the earlier works in a kaleidoscope of tempo changes with the music again ending in a peaceful calm.

It must be said these works demand great concentration from the listener, and their often bleak harmonic atmosphere may be resisted by some. Yet they reward persistence when they are played with such dedication and understanding by a group who have obviously lived with the music before taking it into the recording studio. They play with much feeling and often great virtuosity, notably pianist Robert Markham's contribution to the scherzi. Good recording, too - clear and natural.