THE PRAGUE STRING QUARTET:
Willibald Schwejda (violin); Herbert Berger (violin); Lado Cerny (viola);
Ivan Vectomov (violoncello)
RUZENA HERLINGER (soprano)
Schumann worked in a manner which is rare among the great composers. He appeared to find it necessary to exhaust his ideas completely in one form before he felt the urge to essay another. Thus, in 1840 he spent the whole year in writing nothing but songs ; during the next year he composed practically nothing but large symphonic works for orchestra ; and in the year following he changed his medium again and spent much of his time on chamber music.
His opus 41 consists of three string quartets, of which the third one is being played tonight. All three were composed in practically a month, and occasionally during that period he put on paper a whole movement in one day. And it speaks volumes for his fertility, invention and resource at this time, for he had had scarcely any experience of quartet writing, the one example he is known to have attempted some years before never being seen again after he had completed it. The three quartets were dedicated to Mendelssohn, who was then at Leipzig, and they soon became popular with Leipzig musicians. Indeed these quartets, and other chamber music which Schumann composed in that year, rapidly caused him to become one of the most talked about of the younger composers. Berlioz, on a visit to Leipzig, was so impressed with a quintet he heard played there that he took back to Paris with him news of the fame of this rising young man.