Andante espressivo – Allegro molto moderato
Assai agitato
Adagio molto
Finale. Allegro molto vivace – Quasi Trio

1842 is known as Schumann’s ‘year of chamber music’. In September and October he composed the Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet, and during the summer he devoted himself to string quartets, writing three of them in the space of six weeks. Three years earlier, in 1839, he had planned to spend the summer writing quartets, but two incomplete fragments were left abandoned. He did, however, immerse himself in studying Beethoven’s late quartets. Three years later, he wrote in his diary in February 1842 that he was having ‘quartet thoughts’ and in June he got down to serious work. All three quartets were dedicated to his friend Mendelssohn, and after Mendelssohn’s death in 1847, Schumann wrote to his publisher Härtel: ‘My quartets have taken on a special meaning for me through the death of Mendelssohn … I still view them as the best works of my earlier period, and Mendelssohn often expressed the same view to me.’ The Quartet in A major was the last to be written and Schumann composed it at great speed, finishing it in less than a week. The first movement begins with a dream-like introduction. This ends with a falling fifth that forms the start of the main theme that follows. The second subject is introduced by the cello before being taken up by the other instruments. This sonata form movement ends as it began, with a falling fifth, this time in the cello. The second movement is marked Assai agitato and it is a set of a variations on a restless theme. The music finds repose only in the serene coda which ends in radiant A major. The slow movement, in D major, is the expressive heart of the work, based on two themes, the first of them a richly harmonized melody, the other a more unsettled and fragmented idea. The finale is a rondo that brings the quartet to a jubilant conclusion