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On May 17, 1847, Mendelssohn collapsed on hearing the news that his beloved sister and most devoted friend, had died suddenly at the age of 41. The devastated 38-year-old Felix tried to recover by spending the summer months in Switzerland, expressing himself through drawing and painting rather than composing.   In September he returned to composition with an uncharacteristically grief-stricken and angry Quartet in F Minor of blazing intensity.

The Andante variations in E Major and the Scherzo in A Minor were written immediately after the F Minor Quartet. The Andante's theme, first three variations, and coda are marked by classical restraint and elegance, contrasted only by the passionate and tumultuous fourth variation.

The Scherzo, marked Allegro leggiero, is classic Mendelssohn, hearkening back to the magic and whimsy of the Midsummer Night's Dream Scherzo.   Listen for those moments, however, where Mendelssohn's grief and bitterness seem to invade the prevailing playfulness.

These two movements were to be the last music he wrote for quartet before his untimely death in November 1847.

The conceptual and multifaceted composer/conductor Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world's music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical, multimedia, Eastern and Western musical systems. He is a winner of today's most prestigious honors -- the Grawemeyer Award for classical composition, Grammy Award, Academy Award, and Musical America's "Composer of The Year."

"Eight Colors for String Quartet was the first piece I wrote after coming to New York in 1986. It shares the dark, ritualised singing, very dramatic form and attention the tone colour and dynamic with my pieces written in China, such as On Taoism (for orchestra, voice, bass clarinet and contrabassoon), but still is very different from them. This string quartet (together with In Distance and Silk Road) marks the period of my contact with the concentrated, lyrical language of western atonality. From it, I learned how to handle repetition, but otherwise responded in my own way, out of my own culture, not following the Second Vienna School. I drew on Chinese colours, on the techniques of Peking Opera -- familiar to me since childhood.

"The work consists of eight very short sections, almost like a set of brush paintings, through which materials are shared and developed. The subjects are described by the eight interrelated titles and form a drama, a kind of ritual performance structure. Not only timbre, but the actual string techniques are developed from Peking Opera; the vocalisation of Opera actresses and Buddhist chanting can be heard. Although a shadow of atonal pitch organisation remains in some sections of this piece, I began to find a way to mingle old materials from my culture with the new, to contribute something to the western idea of atonality, and to refresh it. I found a danger in later atonal writing to be that it is too easy to leave yourself out of the music. I wanted to find ways to remain open to my culture, and open to myself."

From December 1927 to March 1928 Bartók made his first tour to the USA. In addition to being a composer, ethnomusicologist and teacher Bartók was also a concert pianist, and his tour of the States was most successful. While on tour Bartók entered his third string quartet in a competition sponsored by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia. He and the Italian composer Alfredo Casella won first prize jointly. However, the papers in Budapest reported that Bartók was the sole winner of the $6000, and it was only a few days later that Bartók discovered he was to receive only half that amount. Nonetheless, he wrote in a letter that he was "able to breathe more freely now" and appreciated the publicity gained from the success.

Spurred on by this Bartók set to work on his fourth string quartet, and completed it during the academic break between July and September of 1928. It was not a commissioned work, but early performances were given in 1929 by the Hungarian Quartet. They premiered the work on BBC radio in Britain in February of that year. The fourth quartet contributed to Bartók's growing reputation at the time as a leading "cutting edge" composer, and has since become one of his most thoroughly analysed works.

In 1930 Bartók himself provided a brief and rather neutral analysis of the structure of the 4th quartet. He describes the third movement as the "kernel of the work", around which the other movements are arranged. The fourth movement is a free variation of the second, and the fifth movement is a free variation of the first, creating the so-called "arch form": A B C B A. The symmetry of this form becomes most apparent at the end of the work, when material from the opening returns almost unvaried. However, as in many of Bartók's mature works, the middle or "kernel" of the work also represents a point of change, from a darker, chromatic sound-world into a lighter, more diatonic one. So, while the second movement is muted and intense, the corresponding fourth movement is plucked and humourous, even though they share similar melodic ideas.

The changing point occurs in the middle of the slow third movement; following a long, expressive cello solo, the strings play tremolos and bird-like calls. These are the sounds of Nature, which Bartók loved, and which he frequently included in his music. From here onwards the music becomes more open-sounding and direct. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the last movement which is in the style of a vigorous folk dance. Interestingly, there are Arabic influences in the music as well as influences from Bartók's own native land of Hungary.

The first movement is more concerned with struggle, and the development of a short, twisting chromatic motif that first appears on cello, near the beginning. This motif grows in length until it completely dominates the short coda. Another feature of this movement, and indeed the whole work, is virtuosity. The music makes the highest technical demands on the players, and also explores many different techniques, such as 'sul ponticello' (playing close to the bridge) and the famous 'Bartók' or snap pizzicato (plucked so hard the string rebounds against the instrument).

The five late string quartets of Beethoven, composed between 1822 and the year of his death, are amongst his most sublime creations in the arena of chamber music. Beethoven broke his twelve-year silence in the genre of the string quartet largely at the request of Prince Nikolas Galitzin, himself an amateur cellist, who wrote to the composer from St Petersburg in November 1822 asking for "one, two, or three new quartets". The resulting works, a sustained burst of creativity at the end of Beethoven's life, present a mighty sequence, united by a distinctive style. So revolutionary were they in their time that for many decades after Beethoven's death they were regarded as incomprehensible and virtually unplayable.

The Quartet in C Sharp Minor was considered by Beethoven to be his finest. It was begun in late 1825 and finished in the first six months of 1826. It was unique in almost every sense, and Beethoven was clearly testing the limits of the quartet form. As he playfully noted on the autograph score, the quartet was "stolen and gathered together from various things here and there".

Beethoven's Quartet Opus 131 is strikingly unusual in many respects, not least of which is having seven tightly constructed movements, each to be played with as little pause between them as possible. The Adagio opening movement is a long and graceful fugue based on the four-note 'motto' G Sharp - B Sharp - C Sharp - A, with a heavy accent on the fourth note. Together with the stepwise downward-then-upward curve of the answering phrase, Beethoven weaves a musical fabric of noble beauty.

The D Major second movement is a brisk diversion in 6/8 consisting of a dancing theme, heard on the first violin before being tossed around the quartet. The Allegro moderato passage that follows is marked by Beethoven as the third movement, although it is only eleven bars long. In the style of a recitative, this F Sharp Minor movement even manages to fit in a miniature cadenza for the first violin.

The sprawling Andante fourth movement provides the anchor for the quartet and is one of Beethoven's great variation movements. The theme is shared between the violins in two eight-bar phrases, each played through twice, with the repeat somewhat varied. Each of the six variations follows this double-variation pattern, with the exception of the fifth, which repeats itself exactly.

The Presto fifth movement is a playful scherzo in E, with a theme that is only gruffly hinted at by the cello at the outset, but which is then launched properly by the first violin. Both the scherzo and accompanying trio are played through twice before a coda re-states the scherzo material for a third time.

An exquisite hymn-like Adagio sixth movement in G Sharp Minor, a mere 28 bars, provides a slow introduction to the tragic finale -- the only movement of the quartet in full sonata form. A driving first theme with a stomping rhythm presents much of the material for the movement as a whole. The dramatic coda concludes this monumental quartet in a resounding C Sharp Major.