Notes and Editorial Reviews
The stylistic journey of Arnold Schoenberg is one of the great stories of 20th-century music and most of it is outlined in his string quartets. From the late romantic tonality of the D minor First Quartet and the freely atonal expressionism of the Second, Schoenberg's transition to rigorous serial organization is encountered in the Third and Fourth. The quartet is an ideal medium for clear display of counterpoint, and counterpoint is what Schoenberg was all about, even to the eventual exclusion of all other compositional elements, including harmony.
This music is the opposite of easy listening. It is always working and moving in ways that are not easily revealed to the listener, and in fact the composer discouraged people from trying to
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follow the tone-row transformations of his serial works. The New Vienna Quartet do their best to control these difficult structures, allowing them to expand naturally in a way that reminds us that they have romantic roots and, after all--despite the text, "I feel the air of other planets," sung in the genre-bending Second Quartet--were not written on Mars but in Vienna. Read less
Works on This Recording
1.
Quartet for Strings no 1 in D minor, Op. 7 by Arnold Schoenberg
Performer:
Zlatko Topolski (Violin),
Tomislav Sestak (Violin),
Fritz Händschke (Viola),
Wolfgang Herzer (Cello)
Orchestra/Ensemble:
New Vienna Quartet
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1904-1905; Vienna, Austria
Date of Recording: 06/1967
Venue: Plenar Hall, Academy of Science, Munich
Length: 46 Minutes 16 Secs.
2.
Quartet for Strings no 2 in F sharp minor, Op. 10 by Arnold Schoenberg
Performer:
Evelyn Lear (Soprano),
Tomislav Sestak (Violin),
Zlatko Topolski (Violin),
Fritz Händschke (Viola),
Wolfgang Herzer (Cello)
Orchestra/Ensemble:
New Vienna Quartet
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1907-1908; Vienna, Austria
Date of Recording: 06/1967
Venue: Plenar Hall, Academy of Science, Munich
Length: 30 Minutes 12 Secs.
Language: German
3.
Quartet for Strings no 3, Op. 30 by Arnold Schoenberg
Performer:
Georg Sumpig (Violin),
Tomislav Sestak (Violin),
Fritz Händschke (Viola),
Wolfgang Herzer (Cello)
Orchestra/Ensemble:
New Vienna Quartet
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1927; Vienna, Austria
Date of Recording: 06/1967
Venue: Plenar Hall, Academy of Science, Munich
Length: 32 Minutes 32 Secs.
4.
Quartet for Strings no 4, Op. 37 by Arnold Schoenberg
Performer:
Wolfgang Herzer (Cello),
Georg Sumpig (Violin),
Tomislav Sestak (Violin),
Fritz Händschke (Viola)
Orchestra/Ensemble:
New Vienna Quartet
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Vienna, Austria
Date of Recording: 06/1967
Venue: Plenar Hall, Academy of Science, Munich
Length: 34 Minutes 40 Secs.
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