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...
