String Quartet No. 1
Z podnětu L. N. Tolstého »Kreutzerovy sonáty«
Inspired by Tolstoy's »Kreutzer Sonata«
Bärenreiter URTEXT
Edited by Leoš Faltus and Miloš Štedron
Parts in slipcover
BA 9520 c. € 16.50
Study score
TP 520 c. € 13.50
In October 1923 the Czech Quartet invited Leoš Janácek to »compose something for them«. This provided the stimulus for his first string quartet. The work was inspired by Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata (which he had written influenced by Beethoven’s famous violin sonata). Janácek had also read Tolstoy’s story earlier in the original Russian and already at that time it had inspired him to compose a piano trio in 1907 which was later lost.
Janácek’s string quartet is a masterwork by the almost 70- year-old composer. The work sparked a creative impulse which continued with the composition of the second string quartet Intimate Letters in the last years of the composer’s life.