Par BARTOK BELA. Bartok's 'String Quartet No. 5' was commissioned by the formidable Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, leading patron of chamber music in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. Bartok is alleged to have composed the work in a one-month span of isolation in 1934, and it received its premiere in Washington, D.C. by the Kolisch Quartet in 1935. The String Quartet No. 5 was published…

Par BARTOK BELA. Bartók?s Second String Quartet was composed ? with several long interruptions ? between 1915 and 1918, after he had spent several years almost solely devoted to collecting folk music. The melody and rhythms of the riotous middle movement ?Allegro, molto capriccioso? provide impressive testimony of how his research trips had taken him as far as North Africa. The first edition of th…

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…

Par BARTOK BELA. To make myself clear: This is not 'programme music', it does not require an explanation attached to it; it speaks for itself. What it wishes to say it does by means of pure music. But it does say something, more in fact than the simple music-making we have become accustomed to since the decline of chamber music.' (Zoltán Kodály)/ Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes