This collection of ten compositions for string quartet by Mozart includes six pieces dedicated to Joseph Haydn and three pieces composed for the king of Prussia. The King of Prussia for whom Mozart composed some of these quartets for was by all accounts a Cellist of no mean ability; especially if one may judge by these works whose Cello parts are elaborate and demanding often soaring into the upper ranges leaving the viola to take up its momentarily abandoned role as bass instrument! Works include String Quartet No. 14 in G major K387 'Spring' String Quartet No. 15 in D minor K421 String Quartet No. 16 in E flat K428 String Quartet No. 17 inB flat major K458 'The Hunt' String Quartet No. 18 in A Major K464 'Drum' String Quartet No. 19 in C major K465 'Dissonance' String Quartet No. 20 in D major K499 'Hoffmeister' String Quartet No. 21 in D major K575 'Prussian No. 1' String Quartet No. 22 in B flat major K589 'Prussian No. 2' and String Quartet No. 23 in F Major K590 'Prussian No. 3'

Par BARTOK BELA. Bartók?s Second String Quartet was composed ? with several long interruptions ? between 1915 and 1918, after he had spent several years almost solely devoted to collecting folk music. The melody and rhythms of the riotous middle movement ?Allegro, molto capriccioso? provide impressive testimony of how his research trips had taken him as far as North Africa. The first edition of this quartet, published in Vienna in 1920, contains a conspicuous number of errors that were only partially corrected in a later revision undertaken by Bartók. As late as the 1940s he noted changes in his personal copy of the score that have never previously appeared in print. These late changes by Bartók are taken into account in this definitive edition of the string quartets supervised by Bartók scholar László Somfai, with problematic passages in the sources carefully documented. It is the first-ever Urtext edition of this work. Sensible page turns and cue notes in the parts mean that this edition is ideal for exploring Bartók?s sound world in performance. / Date parution : 2023-05-06/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

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

Jouni Kaipainen's String Quartet No. 6 'The Terror Run' Op. 92. Commissioned by the BBC Radio for the Proms concerts 2010. Dedicated to the Meta4 Quartet. Parts available: WH31197A Programme note: My former experience in writing string quartets has made me used to the idea that a piece of mine in this genre lasts close to half an hour and consists of several movements with different characters. This time the commission clearly stated a duration of 12 minutes and this naturally brought about lots of thinking and orientating. Eventually I luckily found out that I actually can alter mybasic “string quartet philosophy” so that such a short piece became an existing option. In the music itself there is nothing very much to explain. The quartet is for the most part quite lively flowing music in fast tempi. In the very beginning there is something haunting in the atmosphere but soon joyful for the most part delicately light at times maybe also “dance-like” characters take over.  But in terms of dramaturgy   the music has a tendency to grow more weighty and harsh and these quasi-violent elements gradually threaten the sunny unproblematic flow. Closer to the end we come to a point where nothing is easy anymore. This brings about a slow section of quite different nature and after that the former hilarious swing tries to make a comeback – but does not really succeed. The run goes on but the overtones are now more shadowy and the mood on the scary side. The subtitle comes from the novel The Camomile Lawn (1984) by Mary Wesley of which Ken Taylor made a wonderful TV series adaptation for Channel 4 (1992) where a marvellous casting of great actors supports the colourful beautiful and delightful story. In this novel young Sophie (gorgeously played by the 10-year-old Rebecca Hall) has eagerly waited for her older cousins to arrive to her aunt’s house at the

String Quartet No.3 was written for and first performed by the Balanescu Quartet February 1990 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall London. Duration 16 minutes. A score is available on sale..Quoting composer: In the summer of 1989 Icomposed a choral work Out of the Ruins for Agnieszka Piotrowska’s BBC2 documentary which dealt with the physical and emotional responses of some inhabitants of Leninakhan to the earthquake which devastated Armenia theprevious December. When he heard the recording of the work that I made with the Holy Echmiadzin Chorus under the fervent conducting of Khoren Meykhanejian Alex Balanescu suggested turning Out of the Ruins into a string quartet. There seemed no reason or opportunity to do this until I felt the need to add to the intensity of my experiences in Armenia the no less profound experience of witnessing the images of the Romanian revolution on television duringthe later part of December 1989.The compositional procedure was as follows: to take Out of the Ruins as a template on which the Romanian vocal or instrumental music would be superimposed quite often stretched into newintervallic shapes though the demands of the completely performed harmonic structure.