Romberg: Three String Quartets, Op. 2

The German composer and violin virtuoso Andreas Romberg (1767–1821) wrote extensively for the string quartet beginning in the 1790s. His earliest forays into the genre were greeted with enthusiastic approval from Joseph Haydn, to whom Romberg dedicated his Three String Quartets, Op. 2, composed between 1797 and 1799 and first published in 1802. Featuring extensive employment of contrapuntal writing and flexible handling of musical function, these quartets reveal Romberg to be a masterful and imaginative composer deserving of rediscovery. The original notation in these quartets has been carefully edited in this volume to encourage modern performers to exercise freedom in their interpretation of ornamentation, dynamics, and articulation. This edition is based on the composer’s autographs of Quartets nos. 1 and 3 and the original Simrock print of Quartet no. 2, the autograph of which is now lost.