In preparation for the Bard Summerscape presentation of The Wreckers — very much worth seeing, despite the opera's unevenness — I revisited the work of Ethel Smyth on recording: her chamber works, piano music, the Mass in D, and, of course, The Wreckers, which Conifer Classics recorded in 1994. She was, beyond everything else, a composer of impeccable technical skill, nowhere more so than in her String Quartet in E Minor (1902-12). It has a potent, unsettled slow movement and a finale enlivened by quirky whole-tone harmonies. Like many of her pieces, it deserves to heard much more often. A recording of The Boatswain's Mate, which has been described as her most politically pointed opera, is in the offing.
More: For a close and searching analysis of this quartet, see Amy Elizabeth Zigler's thesis on the subject of Smyth's chamber music. Zigler draws attention to Smyth's own comment about that uncommonly vigorous, adventurous finale: "If it is anything, it is . . . 'Suffrage!'"
