The Endellion String Quartet

HAYDN – String Quartet Op.76 No.4 (‘Sunrise’)     

BARBER – String Quartet Op.11

BRAHMS – String Quartet No.1 Op.51 No.1

 

Barber’s expressive quartet includes the Adagio which in its arrangement for string orchestra is one of the twentieth century’s most loved and most played pieces. Here in its original quartet form it has the intimacy and the extreme stretching of sonority that was part of its force in its original conception. Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ is as sun-blessed as its nickname suggests. Brahms’s intense C minor masterpiece is the first quartet he allowed to be published after destroying dozens with which he was dissatisfied (probably quite unnecessarily).