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 ZIMMERMANN BERND ALOIS. With this edition, Schott publishes the early two-movement string quartet by Bernd Alois Zimmermann for the first time. In a letter the composer wrote: 'I am still messing around with my quartet. This probably is the most concentrated work of composition - and the most abstract.' The string quartet belongs within the context of his early works which focussed on chamber music, unlike those of later years. Until 1945, he created a number of piano pieces and songs, a Suite for Violin and Piano as well as a String Trio (ED 7563)./ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes