Commissioned by the Primrose Piano Quartet with funding from the Scottish Arts Council Mr and Mrs J. A.Pye’s Charitable Settlement the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Hope-Scott Trust. Firstperformance by the Primrose Piano Quartet on 13th July 2008 at the Pump Room Cheltenham as partof the Cheltenham International Festival of Music.

Josef Suk’s Piano Quartet (1874 1935) quickly became a standard work not least as a result of the extensive concerts given by the Bohemian Quartet in which Suk was second violinist. This is however the first scholarly-critical edition of this work. It is based largely on a revision of the first edition which contains Suk’s alterations of 1914 and appeared in 1924 on the first copy as well as on newly discovered copies of the parts. Valuable information has also been extracted from printed parts of which the original copies are now no longer extant.

for piano quartet. Par DAVIES PETER MAXWELL. The two nocturnes were composed immediately after major surgery, against a deadline, and, despite the music sounding unlike anything I have written before, I decided to keep them exactly as they turned out. 2010 is a Chopin year, and I made this pair of nocturnes into a little tribute, after playing through and listening to most of his output. Never before had I composed under these drugged conditions – the musical dimensions were enormously exaggerated, with each interval and each phrase being elongated out of all proportion, and the whole few minutes filling the whole of time and space. The orchestration, for piano quartet, was influenced by the very neo-classical feel of the chamber version of the concertos, and the harmonic language very much the result of pondering Chopin’s very individual take on J.S Bach. They are dedicated to James MacMillan and Amelia Freedman respectively. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (2010)/ Répertoire / Piano, Violon, Alto et Violoncelle