New Classical – String Quartets

New Classical Featured Artists – 5/25/20-6/7/20

In the world of classical music, the string quartet is one of the most commonly-composed and performed genres of instrumental music. It owes much of its early development to Joseph Haydn and and it became an extremely popular genre in the Classical and Romantic periods with famous quartets written by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and many others. So popular are these 18th and 19th century string quartets that, when you go to a concert today featuring string quartets, it is these works that you normally hear. These compositions make up the core of the string quartet canon and many of us automatically associate the genre of the string quartet with these master composers.

Of course, the term “string quartet” also refers to the ensemble that performs the music, and many of today’s active string quartets regularly commission and perform the music of living composers in addition to the so-called “standard” repertoire. That’s the music we feature this week on CMI Streaming’s New Classical channel. Connect with us and hear six string quartets by living composers and performed by some of the most critically-acclaimed ensembles active today.