TCHAIKOVSKY  String Quartet No. 3 in E-flat Minor, Op. 30

Although chamber music doesn’t figure prominently in Tchaikovsky’s catalog, his few mature works for small ensembles are of exceptionally high quality. The last of his three string quartets, composed in 1876, was conceived as a memorial to a departed colleague at the Moscow Conservatory and anticipates the elegiac Piano Trio of 1882.

BARTÓK  String Quartet No. 3

Composed in the summer of 1927, the third of Bartók’s six quartets was influenced by the imaginatively colored sound world of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, which the Hungarian had heard in Vienna earlier that year. What Theodor Adorno called the quartet’s “iron concentration” and “wholly original tectonics” are reflected in its highly compressed form.

DVOŘÁK  String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105

Dvořak was at the peak of his form and fame when he wrote the last of his 14 string quartets in 1895. In its hearty embrace of the Czech idiom, the A-flat–Major Quartet celebrates the composer’s return to his Bohemian homeland after nearly three years in the United States. The bewitching score highlights Dvořak’s seemingly limitless fund of melody, as well as his mastery of harmony, texture, and rhythm.