KEY POINTS:
The fourth instalment of Peter Maxwell Davies' Naxos String Quartets is a testament to the faith that Klaus Heymann and his team have put in the health of the contemporary music scene.
With one more CD still to come, it is also a heartening example of chamber music's special ability to intrigue and stimulate with subtle ploys in an age which would swamp us in cultural coarseness.
The Seventh and Eighth Quartets tell different stories. The Seventh works around Rome, responding, in a series of elegiac slow movements, to seven buildings by the great Baroque architect Francesco Borromini.
We can hear the "modernisation" of San Giovanni in Laterano in the music of the third movement, while the final tribute to San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane catches the schizoid aspect of the sculptor's personality, reflected in both his work and his bizarre suicide.
As with Davies' earlier quartets, everything is underpinned with a sense of civilised dialogue, complementing a contemplation of architectural space and ornament in musical terms.
The much briefer Eighth Quartet is an 80th birthday tribute to the Queen, reminding us that this composer, once a firebrand and a revolutionary, is Master of the Queen's Music.
Davies liberates a John Dowland galliard ever so elegantly over a 20-minute span, a journey that acknowledges an illustrious English tradition and perhaps chides those royals who, in some people's eyes, have rarely taken a responsible lead in cultural issues.
The Maggini Quartet has gained a reputation for its devotion to the British repertoire and Sir Peter is done proud. We wait for the final two quartets with a mixture of anticipation and sorrow. Would that Naxos extend the commission.
Another Naxos release finds Auckland flautist Uwe Grodd with the American Janaki Trio in three flute quartets by the Czech Johann Baptist Vanhal, one of the most popular composers of 18th-century Vienna.
Vanhal, a successful freelancer, wrote to get a living. His scores run into the hundreds and their quality is extremely variable.
The music on this CD is pleasant fare. Performances could not be bettered and the Canadian recording has an attractive ambience. But alas, Vanhal's all-encircling blandness exerts an inevitable toll.
Maxwell Davies, Naxos Quartets 7 and 8 (Naxos 8.557399)
Vanhal, Flute Quartets (Naxos 8.570234)
