Josef Haydn, the 'father' of the string quartet pushes the form in new directions in his ground-breaking Opus 33 quartets.
Played by the Borodin Quartet at their Chamber Music New Zealand concert in Auckland Town Hall, 16 September 2018.
Borodin Quartet Photo: CMNZ
'It was a duty that I owed to Haydn to dedicate my quartets to him; for it was from him that I learned how to write quartets.' So Mozart is reputed to have said of his own set of 6 quartets that he began writing in the new year of 1782 - after the Christmas 1781 publication of Haydn's Opus 33.
Haydn had had a considerable lay-off in the quartet department, when he'd presumably been kept busy in the employ of his patron Prince Esterhazy. He pitched this opus 33 set to potential subscribers as a 'brand new à quadro ... written in a new and special way, for I have not composed any for ten years'.
The opus was a further evolution in the Quartet form of which Haydn is thought of as the father.
No. 1 is in the rare key for quartets of B minor and much play is made in the opening movement of a search for that key.
Recorded in Auckland Town Hall, 16 September 2018 by RNZ Concert
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineer: Adrian Hollay
