Bartók: Complete String Quartets

Featuring

Ana Török
Răsvan Dumitru
Traian Boală
Zsolt Török
Arcadia Quartet
Béla Bartók

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Composition History

Bartók's Fifth String Quartet was his first work commissioned internationally, by U.S. chamber music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and premiered at the Library of Congress.

Compositional Technique

Bartók's Fourth String Quartet, composed in 1928, is structured as a palindrome, with the slow third movement as the nucleus and the outer movements sharing thematic material.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Bartók aimed to move the string quartet genre beyond its Viennese tradition, incorporating alternative tonalities and rhythms inspired by folk music.

Compositional Technique

The 'Bartók pizzicato,' where the string is pulled so hard it strikes the fingerboard percussively, was introduced in his Fourth String Quartet.

Composition History

Bartók's Third String Quartet, completed in 1927, is his shortest and most formally complex quartet, featuring percussive sounds and astringent harmony.

Compositional Technique

Bartók's First String Quartet reconfigures Stefi Geyer's motif from a concerto into a pair of falling sixths in F minor, creating a sound unprecedented in quartet literature.

Composer Biography

Béla Bartók's First String Quartet was influenced by his romantic involvement with violinist Stefi Geyer; he was passionately in love when he began the work, but it was over by the time he finished it.