String Quartet No. 1 in A Major

Borodin worked intermittently on his String Quartet No. 1 over a period of five years between 1874 and 1879, while at the same time pursuing his full-time job as Professor of Chemistry at the Imperial Surgical Medical Academy in St Petersburg. In four large-scale movements, the work demonstrates Borodin’s astonishingly resourceful mastery of string writing, marrying his deep respect for the great 18th- and early 19th-century Classical masters such as Haydn and Beethoven with musical ideas of typically Russian flavour. It received its highly successful premiere at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in December 1880. A slow introduction laid out like a hymn leads directly into an “Allegro” whose lyrical main theme is based on the middle section of the last movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13, Op. 130. The first violin begins the ensuing “Andante con moto” with a sombre Russian folk song, Song of the Sparrow Hills, in dialogue with the viola. This enormously varied movement features several impassioned outbursts from the first violin as well as a mysterious and eerie middle section. The “Scherzo. Prestissimo” is equally remarkable; its fleet-of-foot outer sections pay homage to Mendelssohn, whereas the other-worldly harmonics of the central trio section conjure up a pastoral fairy-tale image. Like the first movement, the Finale opens with a slow introduction (“Andante”) which is followed by an exciting “Allegro risoluto” dominated by vigorous and obsessive rhythmic patterns.