Performed by Keller Quartet
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http://www.amazon.com/Bart%C3%B3k-Complete-String-Quartets-Nos/dp/B000005EEK
The work was at least in part inspired by Bartók's unrequited love for the violinist Stefi Geyer - in a letter to her, he called the first movement a "funeral dirge" and its opening notes trace a motif which first appeared in his Violin Concerto No. 1, a work dedicated to Geyer and suppressed by Bartók for many years. The intense contrapuntal writing of this movement is often compared to Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, the opening movement of which is a slow fugue.
Amazing, beautiful....
neonjack 1 month ago