Streichquartett Nr. 6

Bohuslav Martinu wrote his String Quartet No. 6 in New York in 1946 while recovering from a serious accident. It was a period during which he privately viewed the developments and growing political tensions in his home country with increasing concern. Musically, the Quartet marks a large step on the path that Martinu described as “geometry evolving into imagination”. It is characterized by an almost uninterrupted use of continuous variation, restless harmonic development, pulsating short rhythms, and an inventive use of timbre. This Urtext edition continues Editio Bärenreiter Praha’s series of new editions of Martinu’s music. The editors have based their text on the composer’s autograph score, deleting all the problematical and sometimes arbitrary editorial intrusions from the sole previous edition of 1950 and 1955. - Preface and critical commentary by Ales Brezina and Ivan Straus (Cz./Ger./Eng./Fr.) - New edition at the cutting edge of Martinu scholarship - Based on all available sources