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 DVORAK ANTONIN. Dvorák's 'String Quintet in G major” op. 77, had five movements when it was premiered on 18 March 1876. Its second movement was the 'Intermezzo” from his 'String Quartet in E minor” (1870). Later Dvorák removed this movement from the quintet, expanded it, and published it as a separate 'Notturno” for string orchestra op. 40. The 'Intermezzo” is included in its original version in the appendix of the score. This edition is based on the 'Complete Edition of the Works of Antonín Dvorák”, the principal source being the first edition of 1888, for which Dvorák subjected the work to revision. - Dvorák's famous quintet with double bass - New detailed foreword by Dvorák scholar David Beveridge (Eng/Cz/Ger) - Musical text based on the 'Complete Edition of the Works of Antonín Dvorák” (series IV, vol. 8)/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par BARGIELSKI ZBIGNIEW . After the first performance of my Fourth Quartet, in Salzburg in 1997, the artists of the excellent Hugo Wolf Quartett approached me with the appealing proposition that I write a new quartet. Rather problematic, however, proved to be the musicians’ delicate suggestion that I invest the work with elements of a more pungent expression and elements of folklore – ideally Polish. That suggestion meant that I did not immediately come to a decision, since folklore had not been (with the exception of a few works for accordion) the object of my interest. However, in defiance of my aesthetic outlook at that time, I decided to take up this interesting invitation and tackle what was for me a difficult problem. Ultimately, I found a way out of this rather ambiguous situation by employing a sort of dodge: I gave the new work a title. In a way, ‘The time that has passed’ substantiates the current to which I referred while writing this composition. The title and the subtitles of the work’s movements, which sound quite exotic in our day and age (there are as many as nine movements), justify the curious marriage between the somewhat nostalgic past and a present that has not yet been particularly well ‘assimilated’. I hope that these feuilles d’album will discharge their ‘toning’ function well. - Zbigniew Bargielski/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes