The Budapest String Quartet in Washington (1959-1961): Mendelssohn & Schumann

The Budapest String Quartet in Washington (1959-1961)

In these years of 1837-42, Mendelssohn was at the height of his humanist glory, concurrently violinist, violist, pianist, composer, conductor (of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig), still a painter in his already too-rare spare time, and a newlywed… ‘At the moment, everything comes so easily and so nicely under my pen’, he wrote the Opus 44 Quartets with their radiant, virtuoso allegros and slow movements tinged with nostalgia – irresistible ‘songs without words’ for strings. The Schumann’s Op.41 String Quartets and Piano Quintet Op.47 are considered as finest compositions and major works of nineteenth-century chamber music. This Op.44 revolutionized the instrumentation and musical character of the piano quintet and established it as a quintessentially romantic genre.

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PRD 250 391

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