String Quartet in E minor

The name Verdi is so firmly linked to his operatic work in the music world's consciousness that his contributions to other genres are easily overlooked. His only chamber music work is due to a forced break in Naples in the spring of 1873 due to postponed opera rehearsals, which the composer used to write a string quartet, much to the surprise of those around him. Despite his orientation towards the quartets of Viennese classical music, Verdi succeeds in making an independent, original contribution to this genre, which, with numerous melodic, harmonic and contrapuntal finesses, leaves no doubt about the compositional standards. The Italian first edition serves as the basis for the Henle Urtext edition, for which important secondary sources such as the autograph score or the French first edition are also used. In addition, the study edition contains a small sensation: the early version of the work, discovered by the editor in Parma a few years ago in the so-called “Abbozzi” (= sketches, drafts and discarded parts of the score) and presented here in print for the first time.