Minguet Quartett

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) covered a lot of ground between the first 'divertimenti' for quartet andhis late string quartets of Opus 77. 'La Chasse' is the first short divertimento, one of the most seductive of Opus 1 and marks the birth of the string quartet around 1760. The six divertimenti of Opus 20, or the 'Sonnen-Quartette' composed in 1772 are by a more complex and sombre Haydn, a man who has already made his mark in the genre. The Second Quartet from Opus 77, the composer's last completed quartet from 1799, is Minguet's choice for one of the absolute masterpieces of string quartet literature. This is genuine 'vintage Haydn'. Here the composer is thoroughly in command and full of surprises - quite remarkable how he, by extending the harmonic boundaries, becomes a precursor to Romanticism. The Third String Quartet by Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952), written in 1976, is in sharp contrast to the work of Haydn. Its subtitle 'Im Innersten' refers to Janacek's Second String Quartet, entitled 'Intimate Letters', with which it certainly shares its direct expressiveness and sudden changes of mood. The contrast between violence and tenderness is a constant in Rihm's work. In this Third String Quartet too, powerful outbursts alternate with passages of extreme internalisation