Antonín Dvořák

String Quartet No. 11 in C major op. 61

Dvorák composed his ambitious String Quartet in C major op. 61 in the autumn of 1881 on behalf of Joseph Hellmesberger Sr., concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic and first violinist of the Hellmesberg Quartet. However, the client dismissed it as a 'weak work' and never performed it publicly. Rather, the premiere took place a year later in Berlin with the Joachim Quartet.

Dvorák, on the other hand, considered his Quartet Op. 61 to be 'the greatest and most accomplished' of his chamber music works to date. The fact that he resolutely tried to get rid of the cliché of a naïve writer of Slavic melodies and to place himself in the Viennese tradition is shown by the filigree texture of the work and the echoes of Schubert's Quintet in C major and Brahms' Sextet in G major.

The editor used Simrock's first edition of the score as the main source. The autograph score as well as the first editions of Dvorák's parts and four-hand piano arrangement were also evaluated. The edition contains a facsimile of twelve discarded bars of the Violin Sonata op. 57, which Dvorák used and developed further in the 2nd movement of the quartet.