Für Streichquartett-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 enter with a bang in 1924 withhis Rhapsody in blue. He prepared himself for this by taking an intensive course in composition during which he wrote this brief ?Lullaby? for string quartet as an exercise probably in 1919. He liked its catchy melody so muchthat he later used it again in his one-act ?jazz opera? Blue Monday Blues. ?I find the piece charming and kind? wrote his brother Ira in 1968 when the quartet movement appeared in print for the first time. Thus the world wasgiven a second lullaby by this American composer one worthy to stand alongside his famous ?Summertime? from Porgy and Bess.(englisches Originalzitat: ?I find the piece charming and kind.?)

Italian Quartets Salzburg Divertimenti. This volume brings together Mozart?s youthful attempts at this later so central genre of the string quartet: the astonishing ?Lodi Quartet? K. 80 by the only fourteen-year-old composer, the three ?Quartet-Divertimenti? K. 136?138 which are also readily played by chamber orchestras, and Mozart?s first true string-quartet cycle K. 155?160 which was composed during his third (north-)Italian journey in 1772/73. Mozart?s cleanly written scores of all the compositions have been preserved so that the edition stands on a secure foundation. In his informative commentary, Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, the experienced Mozart editor at G. Henle Publishers, devotes a separate, comprehensive explanatory section to the well-known articulation problem ?dot or wedge?. The Armida Quartet provided artistic input for this edition.

Chaconne. Par LERDAHL FRED. Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach’s D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern. My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

George Nicholson's Salut for String Quartet. The death of Peter Cropper in May 2015 was an immeasurable blow to the musical community especially to those of us who knew him not only as a wonderful wise musician but also as a warm colleague and friend. His unceasing devotion to the cause of music and to the promotion of excellent standards in performance was in my experience beyond compare. The finest tribute we can pay him is to continue to make music to the best of our ability and to go on reaching out to continue to explore and learn. I always felt that I would need to commemorate Peter in a piece for StringQuartet the medium he was most obviously associated with and in Salut it is understandably the first Violin part that has pride of place. The piece develops contrasting textures and registers and above all it is concerned with the influence of the extremely high Violin writing at the beginning on the rest of the ensemble. - George Nicholson Salut was first performed by the Ligeti Quartet Firth Hall University of Sheffield 17 May 2016.

Set of parts for String Quartet No.4 by Poul Ruders dating from 2012. Score available: WH31600 Programme Note: It might be of interest for some to note that a gap of only six months separates the writing of my second and third quartets (1979) but a 33 year interval stands between the third and the present piece String Quartet No. 4.Which is in five movements and is about nothing but itself. The first movement 'Adagio - Presto alla breve - Adagio' is an overture of sorts lifting the lid as it were on the odd bit of what happens later on in the other movements.A portal into:The second movement 'Vivo scherzando' which is just that: a short (2 minutes only) fast and jocular piece leading up to the next movement: 'Adagio sognante' a slow and hushed dream-world paving the way for the pièce de resistance of the entire quartet: 'Presto alla breve' a ferociously fast tour de force for the four players who with that one under their belts can lean back a little (but only a little) and put the whole thing gently to bed in the fifth and final movement: a simple 'Adagio'. Off the record: my first string quartet (1972) has been withdrawn and is no more a fact that renders the numbering of the subsequent quartets a matter of personal conviction. Poul Ruders November 2012