Redolent of the work of Dmitri Shostakovich in its musical language, Evgeny Kissin's String Quartet op. 3 comprises four strongly contrasting movements: on the heels of the stately 'Adagio liberamente...
While he was still in Bonn, perhaps in 1792 the year he departed for Vienna, Beethoven wrote this Duo for Violin and Violoncello. We do not know whether he ever completed his work as only the beginnin...
Alexander Zemlinsky's music was long unjustly overshadowed by what was regarded as the 'more progressive' Second Viennese School. Although Zemlinsky was close friends with its protagonist Arnold Schön...
Schubert's composition of a new string quartet begun in December 1820 was, alas, never to get beyond the first movement; the heavily reworked autograph breaks off at the outset of the second movement....
Although Dvorak's stay in America (1892-95) was very successful, the composer suffered a good deal from homesickness. He had begun the string quartet in A flat major in New York, but continued with it...
Composed in autumn of 1881, Opus 61 is the last of Dvořák's 'middle' quartets by chronology for which Beethoven and Schubert served as the most significant models. Beethoven's influence, from thematic...
Béla Bartók's six string quartets, composed between 1908 and 1940, are 20th-century milestones of the genre. His First String Quartet is closely linked to his unhappy love for the violinist Stefi Geye...
Bartók's Second String Quartet was composed - with several long interruptions - between 1915 and 1918, after he had spent several years almost solely devoted to collecting folk music. The melody and r...
The String Quartet no. 3 is the shortest of Béla Bartók's six Quartets, and was also composed in a remarkably short time. He wrote the score in September 1927, and in the following December it won him...
Even before his String Quartet no. 3 appeared in print in 1929, Bartók was already working on a fourth in the summer of 1928. This five-movement work is arranged symmetrically around a highly expressi...
