Lex van Delden (1919-1988) began to attract attention in his native Holland during the country’s post-war years, not only for his compositions but also for his bravery as a member of the underground resistance movement and as the longtime music editor of the daily newspaper Het Parool. Much of the tonal vocabulary and textural richness characterizing his three string quartets wouldn’t be out of place in early Bartók. Yet van Delden’s lyrical gifts reveal the core of his own personality, be it the uplifting tunes that permeate even the most aggressively rhythmic passages (the central section in Quartet No. 2’s Preludio-Allegro-Postlude) or the plaintive, extended long lines at the end of Quartet No. 3’s finale movement “The Eternal Scream”. And in the Musica di Catasto for string quartet augmented by double bass, note the composer’s sly and imaginative quotations from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
In essence, van Delden’s fluid, assured craftsmanship and thoroughly idiomatic control of the medium provides many an opportunity for each ensemble member to contribute equally and meaningfully. Happily, the Utrecht Quartet musicians do so, and mutually benefit from MDG’s excellent, well-focused engineering. Although newcomers to van Delden’s music might appreciate the wider emotional range of the chamber works for mixed instruments offered on an earlier MDG release by the Viotta Ensemble, the present release constitutes no less an important catalogue contribution.
