Study score to Bent Sørensen's Adieu for String Quartet (1986).The slow choral-like music which initiates 'Adieu' was the result of an image or almost a dream that I had. Without being able to explain why I imagined a procession of people maybe medieval monks wearing large gray mantles with Ku-Klux-Klan-like white cowls on their heads something like a funeral procession. The title Adieu is partly a comment on this funeral procession but also used because the piece is split up by three slow-ascending glissandi a kind of 'farewell glissandi' which removes the intervening music. The first absorbing glissando is soft and removes both the slow funeral choral andthe agitating figures in the first half of the piece. The second glissando is given only to the cello and crawls out from the elegiac melodies in the middle part. The third and 'final' glissando is intense and agitating and prepares the way for the end of the piece. This end primarily deals with the relationship fast - slow. This relationship is turned topsy turvy: the music gets faster and faster until it is so fast that it suddenly becomes slow so slow in fact that it is very quickly able to become extremely fast again.Bent Sørensen

Gabriel Fauré's only string quartet which was composed in 1923-24 is the composer?s final work and was written at the suggestion of his publisher Jacques Durand.Until then Fauré had always put off writing a string quartet evidently because of Beethoven?s imposing shadow. When Fauré composed the quartet he was already extremely ill. He added dynamics and slurs only in some parts of the exposition of the first movement and then asked his former pupil Jean Roger-Ducasse to complete the work. Roger-Ducasse?s additions were however very extensive; he even altered and supplemented some of Fauré?s own markings in the exposition.Bärenreiter's first ever scholarlycritical edition of the quartet based on vol. V/3 of the edition 'Gabriel Fauré: ?vres complètes' begun in August 2010 utilises all sources including the composer?s letters which provide valuable insights into the origins of the composition. In particular Fauré?s penultimate work the Piano Trio op. 120 was used to guide the editor with his emendations.

The quartet in a minor is one of the chamber music works with which Schubert wanted to “pave the way to the great symphony” in spring 1824. At the same time he was paving his way to a wider audience as the“Rosamunde” Quartet was the first and only string quartet that was not only publicly performed in Schubert’s lifetime but also published in parts. It is fortunate for us that this was the case because theautograph of this much-loved quartet is missing today and the only source for the work is the first edition. And this is precisely where the challenge lies as the parts exhibit some inaccuracies regarding the articulation anddynamics. They have had to be carefully resolved something which our new Urtext edition has done in an exemplary fashion. Its name can be traced back to Schubert’s incidental music to the play Rosamunde which can be heardat the beginning of the Andante. Quite a few people might however be reminded of the Impromptu in B flat major op. post. 142 no. 3 in which Schubert later once again took up the beautiful melody.

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?.

Par PART ARVO. Fratres (original setting for violin and piano) was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival and premiered on August 17th, 1980 at that very place (violin: Gidon Kremer, piano: Elena Kremer). Composed in Pärt's very own 'Tintinnabuli'-style, this piece allows many different settings because it is not bound to a specific tone color. 'The highest virtue of music, for me, lies outside of its mere sound. The particular timbre of an instrument is part of the music, but it is not the most important element. If it were, I would be surrendering to the essence of the music. Music must exist of itself … two, three notes … the essence must be there, independent of the instruments.' (Arvo Pärt)/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes