Sentimental Work: Kenneth Sillito

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In 1974 I was summoned with the other members of the Gabrieli Quartet to the Red House in Aldeburgh, where the 61-year-old Benjamin Britten had requested our presence. We were shown into the rehearsal room, where there were four music stands laid out with handwritten parts for Britten’s 1931 String Quartet in D major, a piece we’d never seen before. Britten had composed it while he was still a student; apparently his tutor Frank Bridge had criticised it, saying the second movement was rambling, although the composer John Ireland had liked it. It seems that he’d heard it performed by the Stratton Quartet in 1932 and then, like many other pieces, stuffed the manuscript in a drawer and forgotten all about it.

We had about an hour to learn this 19-minute quartet without Britten there. We liked the first and last movements, although we had to agree with Bridge about the second – there were moments that reminded me of playing Purcell fantasias, where you’re never quite sure if you’re in the right place! The first movement has quite a strong motif that reappears at the end of the third, which is a typical jiggy English-style piece, and quite fun to play. Then Britten came in, switched on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and asked us to play it for him…