Classical Music for String Quartet

The classical-romantic string quartet is part of the central repertoire issued by G. Henle Publishers. Haydn and Beethoven have long been represented in Henle's catalogue and on concert platforms worl...

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...

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...

> 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...

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 among the milestones of the genre in the 20th century. This slipcase bundles the works in six handy, first-class pocket scores. E...

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...

The longest and at the same time most complex of Bartók’s six string quartets was composed in the summer of 1934 as a well-paid commission for the renowned Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in Was...

Bartók began work on his Sixth String Quartet in the summer of 1939 as a guest of Paul Sacher in the idyllic Swiss mountain village of Saanen, before the impending outbreak of war drove him first to B...

The music world associates Verdi's name so obviously with his operatic output that his contributions to other genres can easily be overlooked. His only chamber work owes its existence to an enforced b...

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...

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...

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...

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 Weinzierl castle in Lower Austria, which still stands today, can be considered to be the birthplace of a chamber music genre, which is firmly established in our present-day repertoire. The young H...

Six works belong to opus 9 - the first group of Haydn's string quartets of which we know. The composer also went new ways as far as form was concerned: whereas he had still adhered to the five movemen...

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...

This study edition complements the parts of the String Quartets op. 20 that have already been published in Henle Urtext (HN 208); a new preface by Christin Heitmann provides illuminating background in...

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...