Hear how great operatic composers could also write beautiful string quartets. Puccini’s emotionally powerful Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) was conceived as an elegy for a nobleman and repurposed for his opera Manon Lescaut. Verdi claimed he wrote his quartet as a “mere amusement,” but it’s a polished work of a mature genius infused with lyricism and inspired by past masters, especially Bach and Beethoven in its fugal finale.