Naxos Quartets Nos. 9 & 10

Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, and is currently Master of the Queen's Music. His musical idiom has been described by The New York Times as a combination of 'medieval mysticism, modernist rigour and happy accessibility'. This fifth and final instalment of Maxwell Davies's 10-quartet cycle commissioned by Naxos opens with Quartet No. 9, dedicated to Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, mathematician extraordinary, and sometime Lord Mayor of Manchester, both of which attributes have influenced the content of the work. The composer has written of Quartet No. 10, 'in no way must this be a last quartet. I needed to leave the door open: I had enjoyed writing the Naxos Quartets so much, and perhaps even learned a thing or two, that more could, in theory, eventually flourish'.