Variations Str.Quartet Score

In his Kongsgaard Variations (2006) Swedish composer Anders Hillborg takes the Arietta-theme from Beethoven’s last piano-sonata No. 32 in C minor Op. 111 as the basis for an evocative 16-minute string quartet. Beethoven’s sublime music drifts strangely through the centuries and is warped vaporised and refashioned as if in the words of Hillborg the Arietta ‘is dreaming yet another variation on itself’.

Lubo? Fi?er (1935?1999) was one of the most distinctive figures of Czech music in the 20th century and composed the Variations on an Unknown Theme in 1976. The ?unknown theme? was a prankish eight-bar theme from Fi?er?s student days. In the elation following the home-team win over Canada on 15 March 1959, he made a bet with his colleague Kalach to compose a concert piece for violin and orchestra with the working title ?Canada-Rondo?. The whimsical contest was abandoned, but Fi?er did not forget the theme and he later created variations on it for his new composition for the Talich Quartet. The Variations on an Unknown Theme have now been published for the first time ever. This edition is based on the autograph of the score which is housed in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague.

This movement from the Énigma Variations' contains some of the most moving and passionate music that Elgar wrote. Donald Fraser has created this beautiful arrangment for string quartet.