Par BACEWICZ GRAZYNA. Grazyna Bacewicz realised at a very early age that her main purpose in life was to compose music. Already during the 1920s, as a student of Lódz Conservatoire, as part of her lessons in harmony and counterpoint, she made attempts at composing, in which she tried to resolve nagging technical problems and impart an artistically satisfying form to them. She grew up in an atmosphere of anti-romantic tumult and the emerging neoclassical style. She assimilated the main attributes of that current in a natural way: the need to forge logical formal constructs based on new harmonic principles, not determined by the major–minor system, and also a freedom in the shaping of textures, a fixed element of which was the combining of homophony with more or less strict polyphonic forms. One example of such a strategy is the String Quartet from her student years, signed with the date 1929–1930, which the composer did not include in her official catalogue of works. In the first movement (Allegro moderato), one can distinguish two principal subjects, served in the form of the incomplete exposition of a fugue. The chromaticised first subject, with its strongly highlighted head motif, appears in the cello, with an answer coming four bars later in the first violin. After a short bridge, the first violin intones the second subject, of a different character (dolce), and the answer appears a bar later and an octave lower in the viola. Both subjects can be heard also in the closing coda, and the space between them is filled by counterpoints based largely on ostinato figures of various sorts – a technique that Bacewicz would hone to perfection in her later work. The middle fughetta (Molto adagio), with a subject stated just once, and in only three parts (cello, first violin, viola), acts as an intermezzo. The third movement (Allegro molto moderato) is a double fugue with strongly contrasting subjects. The first subject, in the form of a chromaticised melodic continuum, exposed by the cello, is initially shown with the traditional arrangement retained (answered by the viola and second violin at a fifth, and by the first violin an octave above). The second subject (energico) is a structure shaped by the opening repetition of a motif of perfect fifths, then octaves combined with staccato-tremolo figurations. As the work unfolds, the two subjects appear simultaneously in original and inverted form, coming together in the closing Cadenza in a uniform idea crowned by strong (fff) chords repeated towards the end. - Malgorzata Gasiorowska/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par BEETHOVEN LUDWIG VAN. This new scholarly-critical edition of String Quartet Op. 127, the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, follows upon Urtext publications of Opp. 18, 59, 74 and 95. Once more the editor is the renowned Beethoven authority Jonathan Del Mar. All surviving sources have been consulted including sketches to clarify the conflicting readings in the autograph. Not only has Del Mar reconstructed Beethoven’s original beaming, phrasing, articulation and length of crescendo hairpins, he has also corrected wrong notes that have taken hold in editions published over the years and has supplemented missing notes. Urtext edition at the cutting edge ofscholarship, with detailed separate Critical Commentary (Eng) Parts ideally laid out for performance purposes Parts (BA9029) & study score format 22. 5 x 16. 5cm (TP929) available for sale Already published: String Quartets Op. 18, BA 9016 parts, TP 916 study score String Quartets Op. 59, BA 9017 parts, TP 917 study score String Quartets Opp. 74, 95, BA 9018 parts, TP 918 study score/ Répertoire / 2 Violons, Alto et Violoncelle

Alban Berg's String Quartet can be considered to be one of the founding works of the Second Viennese School. Already composed in 1910 and first published in 1920, it was the last composition the 25-year-old wrote under the tutelage of Arnold Schoenberg, who admired 'the fullness and unconstraint of his musical language, the strength and sureness of its presentation, its careful working and significant originality?. Even today the extremely complex work places the highest technical demands on the interpreters- for this reason our edition contains parts that are especially good to play from, in which each musician can also follow what is going on in the other parts. / Quatuor A Cordes

Mainly famous as an opera composer Donizetti is also the most important Italian representative of the string quartet genre. If the first quartets can be regarded as experiments of the young composer with a strictly classical form the intermediate and later pieces are unmistakable expressions of a mature musical mind.The String Quartets Nos. 1-6 complete the two volumes already published (Nos. 7–12 13–18); for the first time the editions present a complete critically edited musical text.