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

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