Upon leaving school at 16, he became a full-time student at the RCM, where his composition teacher was Bernard Stevens. Tragically, both these works are now lost and so the fruits of an important stage in the composer's development are therefore unavailable to us. All these early works bear the hallmarks of Carlo Martelli's distinctive style which marries an accomplished technique with an instantly appealing and communicative style. In four movements and of about thirty minutes' duration, the Second Quartet manages to cover a wide range of emotions and effects within its compact frame. The first movement, a thrillingly scored Allegro non troppo begins in a halting, fragmentary way, gradually picking up the pieces and developing a driving momentum.
Every line has something of interest, woven with great contrapuntal skill into the whole texture.
There is tenderness here as well as vehemence, yet the overriding impression is one of intellectual strength, a bold and vigorous opening statement. The Finale is a series of finely-wrought variations, the initial theme presented Andante sostenuto but gathering pace and dynamism almost at once in the Allegro non troppo second variation. The Quartet is not only exceptionally idiomatically written, with something of interest for each instrument, but its musicianship and mastery of the form shines out to the listener - this work demands to be heard. The airy, wide-open spaces of the initial theme of the opening Allegro moderato sound Coplandesque but the creator of the Second String Quartet is clearly in evidence in the scoring and imaginatively deployed forces of this attractive and rewarding piece. Yet the movement is concise and pithy with no lingering over its more sumptuously scored passages.