8 Twentieth-Century Pieces. Having touched on the romantic era in 'To a Wild Rose' and the classical era in 'An die Musik', Kember moves forward to the twentieth-century with this thoughtfully chosen collection for string quartet. The Schott String Quartet Series With the first books in the series focusing on baroque, classical and romantic styles, The Schott String Quartet Series has expanded to cover music ranging from traditional pieces through to Eastern-influenced works. Aside from 'Indian Summer', which features original compositions, each book contains original arrangements of well known themes, which have often never been arranged for string quartet before. An important characteristic of these arrangements is that they allow all four instruments to demand the attention throughout the music. The pieces are suitable for amateur musicians or school students and are ideal for public performance./ Recueil / Quatuor à Cordes

Conducteur Ba 10927 et Ba 10928. Par SAINT-SAENS CAMILLE. Ludwig van Beethoven's overpowering legacy caused many subsequent composers to avoid writing string quartets at all. Saint-Saëns was no exception in this respect and waited until 1899 and 1918 to produce his two contributions to the genre. Couched in classicism, they relate in form and style to early 19th-century French quartets and to a titan of the genre: Joseph Haydn. Saint-Saëns' string quartets appear here for the first time in a scholarly-critical edition. It is also the first edition to contain the original version of the Finale to String Quartet No. 2 in score and parts. An informative Introduction is included in the study score to complete this volume of important French chamber music, based on the Urtext from 'Camille Saint-Saëns - Complete Edition of the Instrumental Works”./ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par SIMPSON ROBERT. '. . .the quartet is a highly distinctive work, a welcome addition to Simpson's significant contribution to the British twentieth-century string quartet.'Trevor Bray, Music and Letters Vol. 68, 3 April 1989/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par LANGGAARD RUED. Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) is one of the most important Danish composers of the 20th century. He has, however, only acquired this status many years after his death. Langgaard was an eminent musical talent, but with his romantic and symbolist view of art, he ended up as an outsider in an era when the trend-setting Musical life of the time was dominated by Carl Nielsen?s sober and modern attitude. / Date parution : 2022-04-01/ Recueil / Quatuor à Cordes

Chaconne. Par LERDAHL FRED. Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music. My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach’s D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern. My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes

Par VAUGHAN WILLIAMS RALPH. 'Quartet In C Minor' is in four movements with a total duration of about 25 minutes. The opening Allegro is similar in style to Dvorak in its lyricism, though there is a darker, more brooding atmosphere towards the close. It is tempting to detect a hint of folk-song in the theme of the Andantino, played by the viola, but that may be stretching hindsight too far. The movement has a wistful melancholy that carries over into the following Intermezzo, a song-like episode containing some of the most virtuosic writing in the work. The last movement is a theme and six variations with a fugal ending. The theme is ballad-like with a suggestion of 18th-century elegance. Modality creeps into the second Adagio variation and there is rhythmic exhilaration in the succeeding Presto. What can be admired in this attractive quartet is its conciseness. This String Quartet was his first major composition of any kind./ Répertoire / Trio ou Quatuor à Cordes