Par BARTOK BELA. Béla Bartók?s six string quartets, composed between 1908 and 1940, are 20th-century milestones of the genre. His First String Quartet is closely linked to his unhappy love for the violinist Stefi Geyer, to whom he sent the initial measures of its first movement in early 1908 with the remark: ?My song of death?. When he completed all three movements of the work a year later, he had, according to his friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály, written himself ?back into life?. In this First Quartet, Bartók combines late-Romantic sounds with elements of the folk music that had since 1905 been a source of increasing interest to him. This definitive edition, supervised by Bartók scholar László Somfai, is the first-ever Urtext edition of this work. It takes into account both manuscript and printed sources, as well as letters and notes by the composer in which he recorded matters such as modifications to tempo markings. The Henle edition thus offers a musical text edited to the highest scholarly standards, with fascinating information on the work?s compositional history and performance practice. Sensible page turns and cue notes help to make this edition a real ?must have?. / Date parution : 2023-05-06/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

For Isang Yun String Quartet No. 3 from 1959 marked the beginning of his European creative phase and of his official canon of works. Now it is possible to encounter Yun's early works from his Korean period in the form of his String Quartet No. 1 (1955). Three important 10-minute movements containing references not only to Asia but also to Ravel Bartók and Eastern European folk music and having an idiosyncratic structure: Yun lines up forms and figures makes them emerge from each other in a contrasting manner and assembles them into a mosaic-like whole seeking for integration laying down his material in layer upon layer and ending themovements with a rhythmic unison. […] Even then he probably regarded a work of art as an energetic stream of sounds and as a reflection of a world whose diverging parts weave into a harmonic whole. (Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer)

In autumn 1895 after returning from New York once and for all Dvo ák took up his former position as teacher at the Prague Conservatory. This clearly had an inspiring impact on him because in the space of just four weeks hecomposed a new string quartet in G major. Together with the Quartet in A-flat major op. 105 it forms a glorious close to his chamber music oeuvre. Echoes of Bohemian folk music are here mixed with cantabile themes while hismotivic working shows him to be a master at the height of his powers. Even today it seems almost as if we can feel the composer?s satisfaction with this work: ?I am working so easily and it is going so smoothly that I could notwish it better?.

21 Quartets That Can Be Played by Any Combination of String Instruments-The Compatible Ensemble Series allows chamber groups to play together no matter the instrumentation or who wants to play melody harmony or bass.This collection contains 21 quartets for string instruments in a variety of styles from classical to folk to original compositions. Players get the opportunity to mix-and-match instrumentation and line played making the instrumentation combinations almost limitless. The flexibility of these quartets makes them a must have for any string player.

Of the works which Antonin Dvorak wrote during his three-year sojourn in America the String Quartet In F Major ('American') is the best known after the New World Symphony.It was written essentially without interruption during the course of June 1893 and reflects happy times spent in the hamlet of Spillville over the summer holidays among Czech compatriots descendants of Czech immigrants where the composer surrounded by nature and friends had the ideal conditions for his composition work. The use of elements of American folk and popular music gives the piece its typical character.This pocket score is part of the firstComplete Critical Edition of Works by Antonin Dvorak.Also available set of parts (H1594)