Your favourite String Quartet/Quintet -- Looking for a birthday gift

[gprengel]

Besides the Lachner quintet which I posted a few days ago, my unusual suggestion is this quartet on sketches on Beethoven's last project - here is the first movement: https://youtu.be/ICjuECtzFMg (see the description in the video)

Gerd

[eschiss1]

Not sure whether recording, score/parts, or both were what was being requested. As relative difficulty was specified, I suspect either score/parts or both but not just recording.

[Alan Howe]

Besides the Lachner quintet which I posted a few days ago, my unusual suggestion is this quartet on sketches on Beethoven's last project - here is the first movement: https://youtu.be/ICjuECtzFMg (see the description in the video)

Gerd

I'm not sure it's appropriate to nominate here a favourite composition by oneself!

[John Boyer]

Herzogenberg: String Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 42, No. 1 -- Of all Herzogenberg's quartets, this one comes closest to the Brahmsian idiom that he always strove for.  It has a lovely, evocative opening theme, interestingly developed, and in the finale there is a particularly delightful passage where the instruments take on a rocking, swaying rhythm that shows Herzogenberg stepping beyond mere Brahmsian imitation.
 

[John Boyer]

Fuchs: String Quartet No. 1 in E major, Op. 58 -- Choosing from among Fuchs's four excellent quartets is not easy, but the 1st can stand up to examination as well as any other.  Like the Herzogenberg No. 2, this one is strongly reminiscent of Brahms, particularly in the gentle, shimmering opening, and also in the character of its themes and harmonies. 

[eschiss1]

It does have a particularly lovely slow movement, in C but with a disarming feint toward G for awhile at the beginning; and a brief finale that - not that unusually for Fuchs - begins and ends in minor*, so that only the first movement is actually in the main key and mode. Still, I'm very fond of all 4 of his mature and known quartets (there are two early ones at least parts of which may still survive at ÖNB, and there's supposedly a 5th "Amont" from 1925 that may be in ÖNB's stacks, according to their catalog anyway, but which has yet to be recorded if it's not just a misfiled work by someone else- or - something; so- mature and known.)

*To be picky, the finale begins on a diminished chord (C#-E-G-A#) but not in E minor, more on B minor, maybe... So it doesn't -exactly- begin in E minor as I wrote- it does end in that key, though.