While Schoenberg’s final two string quartets inhabit atonal sound worlds, the Third draws on Classical forms such as theme-and-variations, minuet and sonata-rondo, its unsettling opening movement recalling a fairytale picture, ‘The Ghostship’, its Adagio a movement of spiritual depth and beauty.

Schoenberg was particularly pleased with his Fourth String Quartet, which follows a creative logic of continual development and variation derived from the music of Bach and Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner.

The Phantasy is a virtuosic peroration for violin with commentary from the piano, a prime example of Schoenberg’s avowed aim to write ‘really new music which, as it rests on tradition, is destined to become a tradition’.

Recordings supervised by Robert Craft.

Fred Sherry String Quartet
- Jennifer Frautschi / Leila Josefowicz / Jesse Mills (violin)
- Richard O’Neill / Paul Neubauer (viola)
- Fred Sherry (cello)