String Quartet No. 2 (Arenski)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 35 is a chamber music work by Anton Arenski . The string quartet is unconventionally composed for violin, viola and two cellos. Arensky dedicated the work from 1894 to Pyotr Tchaikovsky, who had died a year earlier .

Origin, structure and style

Arensky, who was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory at the time the work was written, was on friendly terms with Tchaikovsky, whose music had a great influence on him. Tchaikovsky's sudden death in 1893 hit him hard. The decision to choose a chamber music form for a composition in Memoriam corresponded to a tradition widespread among Russian musicians, Tchaikovsky himself with his piano trio op. 50 “À la mémoire d'un grand artiste ” (1882) had a decisive influence. Arenski's string quartet, like this trio, is in A minor. The sentences are:

  • Moderato
  • Variations on un thême de P. Tchaikovsky . Moderato
  • Final. Andante sostenuto

Dense, elegiac harmonies dominate the work. The instrumentation with two cellos gives the quartet a dark, but also warm timbre that is reminiscent of Franz Schubert's string quintet . While motifs from the music of Orthodox funeral masses can be found in the first and third movements , the heart of the quartet is a variation on a theme from Tchaikovsky's legend , the fifth piece from his sixteen children's songs op.54. The finale is similar in its structure and the use of melodies Russian folk music to the "Rasumovsky Quartet" Ludwig van Beethoven .

reception

Together with his 1st piano trio, the string quartet is considered to be the most important composition of Anton Arenski, whose other works are hardly considered today. At the request of his publisher, who had received corresponding inquiries, Arenski created a variant of the quartet for the conventional instrumentation with two violins, viola and cello, which however did not prevail, as well as a piano variant for four hands . Arenski also arranged the second movement for string orchestra as variations on a theme by Tchaikovsky op. 35a .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The piano trio was dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein
  2. ^ Friedhelm Krummacher: Das Streichquartett , Laaber-Verlag 2003, p. 147