string quartet
Three Movements
Duration: 20 minutes
Premiere: February 8, 1966
Marin Arts Quartet
Mill Valley, CA
Recording: Swiss Radio
Publisher: Carl Fischer, New York
The quartet was written in Vienna in 1962; it was the only American work to win an award in the Prix de Composition Musicale, Monaco, 1963.
audio
New Zürich Quartet
1 Lento; allegro; lento beginning
2 Adagio complete
3 Vivo complete
press
“ . . . completely holds the interest . . . delicately and strangely beautilful, with a strong and sure pulling together of strands.”
— The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand (Czech Quartet)
“. . . Extraordinary. To a degree that few modern American works equal, it held its own with music by Beethoven and Smetana. His quartet develops personal ideas on a large, cohesive scale throughout. It is incisive . . . searches sharply and deeply without sentimentality.”
— San Francisco Examiner
“ . . . a quite substantial work . . . the opening lento bursting into the dashing rhythmic theme of an allegro. The adagio worked up to a tremendous pitch of tension, while the very complex vivo kept the four musicians working at a furious pace.”
— The Star, New Zealand