Quatuor Hermes

Anton Webern: met Arnold Schönberg in 1904 and, together with Alban Berg, became his pupil. The “Slow Movement for String Quartet” dates from this time and was only discovered in Webern’s estate by Hans Moldenhauer.

Mozart: nine years separate Joseph Haydn’s Russian Quartets op 33 from his Sun Quartets op 26. WA Mozart allowed nine years to pass after his string quartets (KV 168-173) before he turned to this genre again. In the meantime, the relationship between Haydn and Mozart was characterized by equality and independence. In 1782 he composed the first of his 6 “Haydn Quartets” (K. 387), K. 421 in the following year. According to Konstanze Mozart, it was composed while she was at home with her first child. In 1784, an illustrious string quartet met at Mozart’s house: J. Haydn, violin 1, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, violin 2, W. A. Mozart, viola, JB Vanhal, violoncello. On this occasion, Haydn is said to have said to Leopold Mozart: “Your son is the greatest composer I know of person and name, he has taste and, moreover, the greatest compositional science.”

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was celebrated as a child prodigy in Vienna and composed a ballet score at the age of eleven. He later went to Hollywood and worked as a film music composer. As a Jew, he was unable to return to Europe after 1933. The String Quartet No. 2 was composed during this time. After 1946, he increasingly turned away from modernism.