Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 1 & Verklärte Nacht

SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht 1. String Quartet No. 1. Four Canons • Fred Sherry Str Qrt & 1 Sxt • NAXOS 8.557534 (77:33) Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht is sometimes paired on records with his String Trio, op. 45, an excellent work but one from a much later period, when the composer had already become firmly entrenched in his 12-tone rut. Here, it is very sensibly coupled with the First String Quartet of 1904–05, an excellent work which, though atonal in places, still has many features akin to his late tonal period. Indeed, there is much in the Quartet that, although unmistakably Schoenbergian, might have been influenced to some extent by the experiments of Bartók. I also found it fascinating that both of these early works were premiered by Arnold Rosé’s famous string quartet (obviously with two extra players in the case of Verklärte Nacht ) at the instigation of Gustav Mahler. One of the features of this First Quartet which is so different from later Schoe