Duke String Quartet - 246

An album of modern classical works performed by the Duke String Quartet, originally released on CD (FACD 246) by the Factory Classical label in 1989.

"We thought we were fairly adventurous at the time," Duke member John Metcalfe told writer Stuart Huggett. "We earned most of our money doing gigs for British music societies which - and this is not pejorative at all - have a certain demographic. Most of those audiences want to hear some Mozart and some Beethoven and we had a hard time actually even selling Shostakovich to them. I remember one music club promoter said, 'Our members don't like Shostakovich,' and I said, 'Well, have you had any?' And he said, 'No, but they're put off by the number of consonants in the surname.' We would also get the odd letter to our manager complaining that we wore boots instead of proper concert shoes, and somebody once sent a dress to our leader Louisa (Fuller) which was this unbelievable bright green thing made out of curtain material. They just didn't get it. We were always fighting and struggling but no matter how hard we tried we were on a sticky wicket."

Happily, The Duke Quartet would go on to become probably the most widely heard artists to record for Factory Classical, thanks to their appearances on albums such as Morrissey's Viva Hate and Blur's Parklife.