Instrumentation: string quartet
Edition: score and parts
Editor: Renate Eggebrecht-Kupsa
Item no.: fue 1210
Difficulty: medium
ISMN: 979-0-50012-203-6

First edition for performance of the previously unpublished string quartet. Never in music before Liszt and Wagner (Fanny died 9 years before “Tristan and Isolde”) I have found such creative questioning of classical harmony. (Diether de la Motte).

Hensels String Quartet in E flat major (1834) is a somewhat unconventional work. The opening movement eschews sonata form. Instead two main themes are developed in a fantasia in which nonthematic material is interwoven with the two themes. It is a movement of great forward drive, and that drive is continued in the second movement scherzo inspired by Paganini’s Bell Rondo from his Violin Concerto No. 2, which Mendelssohn-Hensel heard in 1829. The third movement is perhaps the most remarkable, dominated by repeated tones and falling motifs. The feeling of resignation is palpable. The quartet concludes with an energetic finale, which regains the drive of the opening movements. With its inventiveness and lyrical grace, Hensel’s quartet is the equal of any of her brother’s, which is to say that it stands with the best of its time.