A quartet in three movements for two violins viola and cello:1 - Allegro moderato; 2 - Piacevole (poco andante); 3 - Allegro molto.

String Quartet was composed by Mumbai-born Brian Elias in 2012 and was commissioned by the Jerusalem String Quartet. Lasting around 20 minutes this item is the Parts for the work arranged for Violin I Violin II Viola and Cello. The work has been laid out in the conventional four movements Allegro Adagio Presto Adagio-Allegro-Adagio but it is essentially a work in a single movement to be performed withno breaks. A set of double variations generates the thematic and harmonic material for the entire piece in its first few bars with a brilliant Viola solo afterwards. Throughout the piece changes in dynamics and tempocharacterise the different movements before finally ending with a calming return to the slow music.  You can purchase the  Full Score here.

A quartet in three movements for two violins, viola and cello: 1 - Allegro moderato - 2 - Piacevole (poco andante) - 3 - Allegro molto. / Quatuor A Cordes

Holmboe's last quartet work which is unoffi­cially also String Quartet No. 21 was the last work he ever composed and was unfinished on his death in 1996. His pupil Per NørgÃ¥rd has finished the quartet and himself characterizes his contribution by saying that the score existed “in an only partly completed form which could however be written out with only a few cases of doubt”. With only two movements and a play­ing time of about nine minutes it is at its exist­ing length the shortest of Holmboe's string quar­tets. The first movement takes the form of one long arch in a rocking triple time which constantly shiftsamong different tempo and pulse sensations. At the same time the rhythmic en­ergy increases until the movement in a faster Con moto tempo accelerates to a more flowing 12/8 time coloured both rhythmically by cross-­rhythms in duple time and timbrally by harmon­ics in the viola. In its middle section Con fuoco the movement culminates in both tempo and expression until it falls calm in brief recapitula­tions in reverse order of the first two sections. The rocking feeling continues in the second movement but now at a more extroverted level from the outset Allegro and pizzicato. The en­ergy builds up further as the mood intensifies to Con fuoco while all instruments go over to bowed playing but like the first movement this movement ends Adagio here however not as a gradual attenuation but through a sudden shift in tempo to a calm imitative passage before the movement slowly thins out to the almost inaudible through a last dense open sounding chord with a brief violin solo above it. The quartet is dedicated to Holmboe's wife MeLa May Holmboe and was given its first performance by the Kontra Quartet on 22nd March 1997 at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense Denmark.