Ravel, Maurice: String Quartet

The immediate model for this first important chamber music work by Ravel was Debussy’s String Quartet from 1892/93. Nevertheless, the composition, written in 1902/03, already contains unmistakable features that are characteristic of later Ravel works: highly developed sense of tone colour, unexpected harmonisations of the melodic line, cyclical interplay of the motifs and themes. Ravel evidently saw the quartet as a kind of conclusion to his studies at the Paris Conservatoire and dedicated it to his revered teacher Gabriel Fauré. With the Urtext edition of Ravel’s string quartet based on all available sources, a significant gap in Henle’s string quartet programme has been closed – as always in two forms: as a set of parts and a study score.