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Name: M.Nieuweboer
E-mail: ismaninb@yahoo.com
Date: Saturday, August 11, 2001 at 09:30:20
Text: I have a weak spot for Arensky and especially for his 2nd String Quartet. In general, his music has a lot of the good qualities of Tsjaikowsky's music without being out of (emotional) balance. Arensky's 2nd Quartet is a very good example. It has rich melodies, all of them easy to remember, without being superficial. Alas Arensky had even bigger problems creating a solid structure then Tsjaikowsky had. Especially the 3rd movement shows this. It contains that strange reference to Moessorgsky (Boris Godoenow) and Rimsky-Korsakow, (Sinfonietta) though the handling of the material itself is superb. But I cannot hear any relation to the other themes in this movement, so that it hangs in the air. The movement is very crumbled. The form in which Arensky excelled was the theme with variations, so it is no surprise that the 2nd movement is really great. A naive theme hits the listener straight into the heart and is varied in several very different ways, each of them equally impressing. A desolate reference to the 1st movement concludes the variations.

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