Par LEIVISKA HELVI. Finnish composer Helvi Leiviskä (1902-1982) created a broad-based output of orchestral works, solo songs and chamber music. Her style could be described as moderate modernism, deriving influences from multiple sources such as late Romanticism, Symbolism, Expressionism, Existentialism and Neo-Classicism. Leiviskä's output is characterised by philosophical and religious themes, i…

SCHNITTKE - STRING QUARTET NO. 1 - STRING QUARTET / Format poche / Universal Edition

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 WEIR JUDITH. “Shortly after completing my Second Quartet, I realised that all of its formal features reminded me of moments from Beethoven’s quartets. An edgy, conversational opening followed by a long cello tune; an athletic minuet and trio; a hymn-like slow movement; and a second scherzo for the finale, ending with an extended, impassioned coda. I hadn’t intended to write a Beethoven homage…