String Quartet No. 2 (Arensky)

The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 35, is a piece of chamber music in three movements by Anton Arensky. Composed in 1894, it is unusually scored for violin, viola and two cellos. Arensky dedicated it to the memory of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who had died the previous year.

History

Arensky was professor at the Moscow Conservatory, and a friend of Tchaikovsky whose music influenced him. After Tchaikovsky had died, Arensky wrote the quartet in memory of him, following a Russian tradition that Tchaikovsky had also observed when he composed his Piano Trio "À la mémoire d'un grand artiste", Op. 50, in memory of Nikolai Rubinstein. Both compositions are set in A minor.

Arensky structured the quartet in three movements:[1]

  1. Moderato
  2. Variations sur un thême de P. Tschaikowsky. Moderato
  3. Finale. Andante sostenuto

The first and third movements use motifs from the orthodox mass for the dead, is the middle movement and cor of the composition a set of variations of a theme by Tchaikovsky, the fifth piece, Legend, from his Songs for Children, Op. 54. The finale is reminiscent, both in structure and the use of Russian folk music, of Beethoven's Rasumovsky Quartets.[1]

References
  1. Krummacher, Friedhelm (2003). Das Streichquartett (in German). Laaber Verlag. p. 147.
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