Antonín Dvořák: String Quartet No. 8, Miniatures, Cypresses Quartet
9/1/2013, 20 Tracks, 1:15:06
Featuring
František Souček
Petr Střížek
Petr Holman
Vladimír Fortin
Zemlinsky Quartet
Antonín Dvořák
Did you know?
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Composition History
Dvořák's Cypresses for string quartet are transcriptions of twelve of his youthful songs from 1865, which were originally set to poems by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský.
Performer Biography
The Zemlinsky Quartet, named in honor of Viennese composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky, has won numerous international awards, including First Prize at the Bordeaux String Quartet Competition in 2010.
Composition History
The complete cycle of twelve Cypresses for string quartet was not published until 1957, although Josef Suk, Dvořák's son-in-law, had published ten of them in 1921.
Compositional Technique
The slow movement of Dvořák's String Quartet No. 8, Andante con moto, uses the contradictory virtues of the dumka, an epic Ukrainian ballad with an elegiac expression.
Composer Biography
The original songs that became Cypresses were dedicated by a young Dvořák to his student Josefina Čermák, a soprano at the Provisional National Theater, with whom he had an unrequited love.
Compositional Technique
In Dvořák's String Quartet No. 8, the viola plays a particular role, asserting itself as the composer's medium in lyrical passages that are like songs without words.
Composition History
Dvořák's String Quartet No. 8 in E major, Op. 80, was originally intended to be Opus 27, but the publisher released it as a recent opus (80) in 1888.
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