Edvard Grieg – String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 27
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
String Quartet No. 1 in g minor, Op. 27
(for 2 violins, viola and cello)
I. Un poco andante – Allegro molto ed agitato
II. Romanze. Andantino
III. Intermezzo. Allegro molto marcato – Più vivo e scherzando
IV. Finale. Lento – Presto al saltarello
Composed in 1878, when Grieg was around 35 years old.
Copenhagen String Quartet
ensemble, Recorded in the 1960’s.
Tutter Givskov, violin.
Mogens Lydolph, violin.
Mogens Bruun, viola.
Asger Lund Christiansen, violoncello.
Edvard Grieg produced only one complete mature string quartet, the String Quartet in g minor, Op. 27 dating from 1878 when he was 35. The historical record indicates that it was a challenge for Grieg, a composer who was perhaps more accustomed to writing in smaller forms such as his celebrated art songs and Romantic piano miniatures. Yet his remains one of the most original and influential string quartets of the late 19th century, approximately contemporaneous with the first important quartets from Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Borodin and Dvořák. It was written in the same year as César Franck’s piano quartet with which it shares some prominent elements of innovative cyclic design. Grieg’s quartet even managed to impress the aloof Debussy who, fifteen years later wrote his only quartet in the same key, with more than a few striking similarities.
Like many composers (notably Schubert, Mendelsohn and Shostakovich), Grieg borrows from his own music for the main theme of the quartet: a portion of his somber song Spillamæd (Minstrels). The icy theme is announced in unison by the quartet right at the beginning, the emphatic slow introductory andante before the bristling allegro. Almost all of the musical material in the first movement is derived from it including several creative variations of the full theme itself in a wide range of expression and affect. There are at least eight clear permutations for the listener’s delightful discovery. But like the cyclic designs of Franck and, later, Debussy, the theme extends beyond the bounds of the first movement to obliquely influence the second, reappear in the third and frame the fourth including a nearly literal restatement of the quartet’s beginning just before the final conclusion. Though the complete work comprises a four-movement design with a great variety of music, it is fused together with a rare artistic unity.
THE BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC 