As the opus numbers suggest, the five string trios are relatively early works. Beethoven had sent opus 3 to print in early 1796, and in the same year, he began his compositional work on the Serenade o...
The five string quartets in this volume are generally designated as Beethoven's 'middle quartets,' even though stylistically they do not all build a closed unit. More than three years lie between the...
More than a few experts and aficionados count Mozart's string trio in E-flat major K. 563 among his most magnificent compositions. This masterwork, entered into Mozart's own catalogue of works on 27 S...
Johannes Brahms's late chamber works are surely among the most splendid music ever written for the clarinet. In the last years of his life, Brahms seems to have become weary of composing - but fortuna...
'In the evening we played Robert's E-flat major Quartet for the first time ... and I was once again truly delighted at this beautiful and so youthful work', enthused Clara Schumann in 1842. In prepara...
No serious musician and no serious orchestra can ignore this new Urtext edition of a major work of concerto literature, since the music text frequently diverges from that of previous editions. All the...
This Trio's unusual scoring for horn, violin and piano prompted speculation early on about a possible background to it that had no connection with music. Brahms's biographer Max Kalbeck saw in it a la...
Max Bruch composed these eight, highly romantic pieces for his son Max Felix, a talented clarinettist. In order to enable the work to be played more widely, Bruch arranged the clarinet part for violin...
> First Urtext edition since 1955 > Dvorák's most famous string quartet After a twelve-year interval, Dvorák once again turned his attention to the string quartet in summer 1893. He had been musical d...
In June 1905, Ravel told a friend shortly before setting off on a long holiday: 'I was terribly busy because of a piece for harp commissioned by the Érard company. I was able to finish it after a fash...
In the Classical period, and well into the 19th century, piano trios were something of a musical fashion accessory. There was thus good reason for Beethoven also to engage with the genre, following th...
At the end of the 18th century, the town of Cádiz in southern Spain provided the backdrop for a Passion to mark Christ's hour of death; its focal point was the reading and interpretation of Christ's l...
When Dvořák suddenly became internationally famous in 1878 with his Slavonic Dances, he received, among other things, a request for a new string quartet from Jean Becker, the first violinist of the re...
At the first performances of this sonata, composed between 1920 and 1922, even close friends of the composer were perturbed: Following the intoxicating sounds of La Valse, the smaller scoring and mode...
This volume brings together Mozart's youthful attempts at this later so central genre of the string quartet: the astonishing 'Lodi Quartet' K. 80 by the only fourteen-year-old composer, the three 'Qua...
In 1919-20 George Gershwin was making a name for himself with Broadway songs and a first show of his own in New York. But he was already attracted to the world of classical music - a world he would en...
When it came to the genre of the string quartet, Beethoven was a relative latecomer. He was already 28 years old when he obtained the contract for the composition of the Quartets opp. 18 from Prince L...
The autograph score of the Quartets op. 17 was in the possession of the imperial police chief Johann Nepomuk Neuwirth, whose widow gave it to the Wiener Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1875. It is sa...
The preface by Christin Heitmann provides illuminating background information. Haydn did not assign the nickname 'Sun Quartets': it alludes to an edition of the time, in which the title page was decor...
Haydn allowed about ten years to pass before composing a new cycle of string quartets after opus 20: the so-called 'Russian Quartets'. This is the first series of quartets that we know he wrote with p...
The chamber music world has been eagerly awaiting this - all of Haydn's string quartets are finally available in Henle Urtext quality! The last edition to be finished contains the String Quartets op....
Masterly and full of new ideas': thus the Swedish ambassadorial secretary Silverstolpe when he first heard these pieces in 1797. Haydn's friend, the music historian Charles Burney, reported in 1799 th...
These are the last of the nearly seventy quartets in Haydn's oeuvre. Originally he intended to write a set of six quartets, as so often in the past, but at the time they were written, in 1803, Haydn's...
A must for all ambitious string ensembles! Because due to recent source discoveries, the musical text of this classic in the Henle catalog could be optimized in numerous details. The thoroughly revise...
The string quartet is generally considered as the chamber-music genre of the classical era: invented by Haydn, elaborated by Haydn and Mozart, and brought to its compositional peak by Beethoven. All l...
Brahms had already composed over 20 string quartets (he confessed to a friend that he had burnt all of that 'stuff') before he finally presented his Opus 51 to the public. In the end only three surviv...
Spirited', 'dramatic', 'highly expressive', and 'masterly' are among the comments made upon Mendelssohn's String Quartets op. 44 nos 1-3. He wrote them in 1837/1838, at a very happy time: he had just...
Franz Schubert composed the song 'Death and the Maiden' in 1817, and in 1824 used that melody in the theme-and-variations second movement of his String Quartet in d minor D. 810. The song's popularity...
Mendelssohn's String Quartet op. 80 is one of his few 'autobiographical' works, a moving musical document of his grief over the death of his sister Fanny and his attempt to artistically process the pa...
Max Reger's two string trios stand alongside Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat major (K. 563) and Beethoven's op. 9 trios at the pinnacle of the genre. In their style and technical demands Reger has cle...
Attention, string quartet players: the long wait is over! Henle launches its series of late Beethoven quartets with op. 131 in c sharp minor and op. 132 in a minor, using the definitive urtext from th...
In the Mozart Year 2006, Henle will begin publication of all of Mozart's string quintets in a three-volume Urtext edition (parts and study scores). Volume II, comprising the best-known and most often...
No music lover can remain untouched by the emotional quality of this work, composed in Schubert's last year. The monumental weight of the outer movements, the intimate lyricism of the 'Adagio', as wel...
When Smetana completed his Quartet in e minor in dark and dismal colours in 1876, he had already been completely deaf for two years. Which musician is not familiar with the fateful passage in the four...
On 18 May 2006 a manuscript was auctioned at Sotheby's that made chamber musicians prick up their ears. Shortly before his death, Max Bruch composed three works for strings which he was no longer able...
> Inaccuracies in the first edition regarding the articulation and dynamics have been carefully resolved The quartet in a minor is one of the chamber music works with which Schubert wanted to 'pave th...
Although Schumann's first attempts at composing for this supreme form of chamber music in 1838/39 were only fragments, the three String Quartets op. 41 in a minor, F major and A major were written in...
The genesis of Mendelssohn's string quintets is closely connected to his friend Eduard Rietz and the latter's brother Julius. Deeply affected by Eduard's death in 1832, Mendelssohn exchanged the 'Minu...
Debussy's new string quartet received a very cool reception at its première in Paris in December 1893, performed by the famous Quatuor Ysaye. The critics were upset by its unusual harmonies and orches...
Fingering: Klaus Schilde The name Mahler is so closely associated with the symphony and Lied genres that it is little known how intensively he applied himself to chamber music during his studies. Of h...
Very few really important works have been written for piano quintet - alongside the famous works by Schubert, Schumann und Brahms, the quintet that Antonín Dvorák composed in 1887 certainly numbers am...
Brahms had in fact wanted to stop composing in 1890, but his encounter with the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld inspired him so much that he produced several works in a row for him over a brief period o...
The Fantasy Pieces op. 88 are Schumann's first contribution to the genre of the piano trio and date from his very prolific 'chamber music year' 1842. However, Schumann needed an unusually long time to...
Mendelssohn is considered a self-critical composer, who repeatedly reworked a number of his pieces until he deemed them worthy to be published. The path to his first Piano Trio was particularly rocky:...
For several years following composition of his first piano quartet, Dvořák's publisher Simrock pushed him to compose a follow-up piece in the genre. The work, written during a few short weeks in summe...
One needn't hesitate a second in assigning Schubert's two piano trios to his best works. Both were written no later than 1827, hence one year before the composer's death, and are typical works of his...
The origins of Brahms‘ g minor Quartet op. 25 go back to the 1850s, although the work was not finished until fall 1861. The composer held his new work in high esteem, even putting it on the program of...
One can only regret that Beethoven left only four piano quartets, as these four works rank among the most popular of this genre. Three of them, the Quartets WoO 36, had been penned in Bonn, which make...
In the classical era, and far into the 19th century, piano trios were what we might call 'fashion accessories'. It is thus no coincidence that Beethoven, following in the footsteps of Haydn and Mozart...
Piano trios belong among the great genres of Classical chamber music, and Brahms , too, turned his attention to this genre early on. He wrote his opus 8 in fall and winter 1853/54, thus at the age of...
