Stratton Quartet

The Stratton String Quartet was a well-known British musical ensemble active during the 1930s and 1940s. They were specially associated with the performance of British music, of which they gave numerous premieres, and were a prominent feature in the wartime calendar of concerts at the National Gallery. After the War the group was re-founded as the Aeolian Quartet.

The Stratton Quartet is also the name of a contemporary all-female string quartet, founded by Elizabeth Bell, Lorie Hippen, Laurel Browne and Kristen Anderson, in the Minneapolis area of Minnesota.

Neither is to be confused with the Jeremy Stratton Quartet, a contemporary Jazz ensemble.

The quartet was named after its leader George Stratton, who was also leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. Watson Forbes studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Editha Knocker and Raymond Jeremy, and played in the Academy quartet as second violin: but, opportunities arising to take on the viola desk he made the transition and viola became his primary instrument. He studied in Pisek, Czechoslovakia with Otakar Ševčík, and in England received lessons from Albert Sammons. Around 1930 he joined the Stratton Quartet and remained with it through the 1930s.

Records of the Arts and Humanities Council (UK) show that the Stratton performed at the Grotrian Hall in London in June 1928, and (with the pianist Harriet Cohen) in Berlin in February 1929. In October 1930, at the Conway Hall (Red Lion Square), they took part in a series of 10 free concerts with the Guild of Singers and Players. Probably also around 1930, they performed the Quartet op 44 of the Suffolk composer Stanley Wilson. In February 1932 they are found at Brighton with Joseph Szigeti, and a month later assisted Benjamin Britten by providing a private run-through of his Quartet in D major. They performed at Londonderry House (London) for the British Music Society in January 1933.

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