Miklós Rozsa: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2013)

Most of the famous composers of film music wrote works in straight concert genres on the side, but few took it as seriously as the Hungarian-born Miklós Rózsa, who titled his autobiography Double Life and demanded that a summer composing break be written into his movie contracts. Some might expect that Rózsa's string quartets would represent the purest version of his classical style. In a way they do, and yet the two realms of Rózsa's music are not quite as distinct as he makes out. Traces of his film music can be heard, ... Read More

Most of the famous composers of film music wrote works in straight concert genres on the side, but few took it as seriously as the Hungarian-born Miklós Rózsa, who titled his autobiography Double Life and demanded that a summer composing break be written into his movie contracts. Some might expect that Rózsa's string quartets would represent the purest version of his classical style. In a way they do, and yet the two realms of Rózsa's music are not quite as distinct as he makes out. Traces of his film music can be heard, especially in the String Quartet No. 1, Op. 22, of 1950: in the second movement, marked Scherzo in modo ongarese, there is a somewhat more accessible version of Bartók's Hungarian quartet language, leavened by the German late Romanticism on which Rózsa's film scores are based. He acquired that language as a student at the Leipzig Conservatory in the 1920s; there he wrote the String Trio, Op. 1, whose original 1929 published version receives its premiere recording here. Rózsa later... Read Less