SKU: PO.PME07

ISBN 9780958242882.

Composed after finishing the vocal score of an opera based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, Farquhar's String Quartet No.3 (1998) is pervaded by material from the opera. A twisting, rising violin phrase provides most of the material for the first movement, in which moods shift and compound rhythms alternate and combine. Speed and capriciousness are reflected in the scherzando second movement, while the third movement is a series of variations culminating in the twisting lines of the work's opening.

SKU: HL.48180283

UPC: 888680947705. 9.0x12.0x0.146 inches.

Published in 1927, 20 Studies for Viola is the most famous work by Maurice Vieux (1884-1951), a French violist. Composed for upper intermediate / advanced players, these twenty studies of two pages each will help to improve bow technique. Most of the studies are dedicated to famous violists who won the First Prize of the Paris Conservatoire: Jean Gay, Etienne Ginot, André Jouvensal, Jacques Desestre, Denise Thoret, Pierre Pasquier, Robert Boulay, François Broos, Louis Artières, Mrs Crunelle-Martinet, Louis Chaaton, Alice Goninet, Jean Lefebvre, Albert Bernard, Jean Cauhapé, René Cézard, Suzanne Robin, Marcel Quattrochi, Emile Amette and Alice Merckel. Marcel Vieux was also a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and a soloist at the Paris Opera. The Maurice Vieux International Viola Competition was established in 1983.

SKU: HL.49044660

ISBN 9790200226072. UPC: 842819112990. 9.25x12.0x0.641 inches.

Primarily known as an opera composer, Donizetti nevertheless is the most important Italian representative of the string quartet genre. Whereas the first quartets can still be regarded as experiments of the young composer with a strict classical form, the middle and later pieces are an unmistakable expression of his mature musical spirit.

SKU: HL.48025043

UPC: 196288021728.

Ignace Strasfogel (1909 - 1994), a master student of Franz Schreker and Leonid Kreutzer, the youngest student at the Berlin Hochschule and the youngest recipient of the prestigious Mendelssohn Prize of the Weimar Republic, made a career as a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera after his emigration in 1934. His String Quartet No. 1, probably written in 1927 as the final work of his studies with Schreker, is an early work of the highest perfection. In the first of the two movements, grotesque-capricious scenariosare revitalized by contrapuntal artistry. The second, non less polypohnic, is a widely branched scherzo with an elegiac trio section. Just as striking is the harmony: With individually shaping of all four parts, all facets up to polytonality and complete detachment from functional tonality are explored - in a certain affinity with the musical language of Alban Berg, not without tongue-in-cheek references to the neoclassicism of the 1920s. A just as original as important contribution to the quartet repertoireof the early twentieth century.