Urtext Edition

1887 komponierte Antonín Dvorák kurz hintereinander zwei Terzette für zwei Violinen und Viola, Gelegenheitskompositionen für Amateure. Das zweite Terzett bearbeitete Dvorák wenig später zu vier Stücke...

In autumn 1895, after returning from New York once and for all, Dvorák took up his former position as teacher at the Prague Conservatory. This clearly had an inspiring impact on him because in the spa...

The Sextet in B-flat major was already judged to be 'one of the most beautiful works by this young composer' after its initial performances in early 1861. It was popular with both public and press, an...

Brahms's First String Sextet became very popular after its publication in 1861, yet his publisher Simrock still hesitated when the composer offered him a second such work in 1865, 'in the same cheerfu...

Each of these four-movement works is a real jewel. Mozart worked hard on these six string quartets, and dedicated them to none other than the 'inventor' of the genre himself: Joseph Haydn. They were f...

Finally, the time has come: over the next few years all of Mozart's 26 string quartets will be published by Henle in an Urtext edition of both score and parts. All previous editions have left much to...

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....

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...

'Harmony, bliss, music of Raphaelesque beauty! and yet in its simplicity, how wonderfully artistically everything is done.' This is how Theodor Billroth enthused about the first String Quartet op. 88...

As with its companion work op. 88 from 1882, Brahms's second string quintet was supposed to be completed in the relaxed atmosphere of a summer in Bad Ischl, but eight years later. The work's first tec...

In setting Richard Dehmel's poem 'Verklärte Nacht' (Transfigured Night) in his op. 4, the young Arnold Schönberg pursued the intention, as he himself said, of 'attempting those new forms in chamber mu...

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 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 volume opens with something unusual: opus 42 is a single work, short and surprisingly easy to play; Haydn described it as 'something small and with only 3 pieces'. The Quartets op. 50, including t...

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 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...

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...

We have now come full circle - this edition concludes our Urtext series of the complete Beethoven string quartets. The ending of this highly expressive work, at whose centre is the famous 'Cavatina',...

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...