Bernhard Alt: Suite for double bass quartet

About the Composition Bernhard Alt’s Suite is fun, stylish, charming, elegant and rhythmic, and would have been a revelation to audiences in the 1930s. Alt composed music which is always entertaining, with no movement outstaying its welcome, and is an effective, accessible and light-hearted addition to any quartet programme, even into the 21st-century. The musical styles may be slightly out of date in the more sophisticated 21st-century, but this is still a great study or recital piece for students to develop a range of ensemble and musical skills with also has much to commend it for the advanced or professional quartet. The Suite is in four contrasting movements and lasts around 12-13 minutes. The opening Präludium is slow and stately and has a slow moving chordal accompaniment with gently shifting harmonies and an upward moving theme for bass 1, which eventually develops into a solo cadenza employing several effective double stops, before the opening theme is restated but with a stac