String Quartets

After the wealth of string quartets produced by the composers of High Classicism - Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert - the leading figures of Romanticism were somewhat daunted by the expectations of their public. Felix Mendelssohn achieved a respectable total of six quartets but the three notable composers represented in this program managed only nine between them. Johannes Brahms, in particular, was paralysed by the thought that if he wrote a symphony or a quartet, people would measure it against Beethoven's mighty creations. He kept a bust of Beethoven in his study and destroyed numerous works which he felt would not stand comparison with those of his hero. Robert Schumann was a slightly different case, who, in 1842 he confronted chamber music head-on: he and Clara studied Haydn's, Mozart's and Beethoven's quartets, playing them together on the piano, and in June and July Robert produced an extraordinarily unified trio of quartets, connected by key but distinct from each other. Hugo Wolf wrote relatively little chamber music, but with the Italian Serenade of 1887, in a few days Wolf produced one of the most delectable miniatures in the chamber literature: this free rondo dances in the most light-footed manner. Receiving their first international release on CD, all three works are here performed by the Musikverein Quartet, founded in 1973 by members of the Vienna Philharmonic.