String Quartet No. 2 (Piston)


String Quartet No. 2 by Walter Piston is a chamber-music work composed in 1935.

History

Piston's second string quartet was composed two years after his First Quartet and, like it, was premiered by the Chardon Quartet, on March 16, 1935. It was written, together with the Piano Trio, while Piston was on a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Analysis

The quartet is in three movements:
  1. Lento – Allegro
  2. Adagio molto e con espressione
  3. Allegro giusto
The restlessly chromatic Lento introduction to the first movement is built on a three-note motive, A–C–D, that is found also in a number of the composer's other works. The boisterous main allegro portion of the movement is in A minor and sonata-allegro form. The slow movement is based on the motive from the Lento introduction of the first, and is in a chromatically inflected C major. The finale is in changing meters, with a dissonant-contrapuntal first theme, and a pandiatonic second one that wavers between G major and E major. These tonalities contrast sharply with the equally wavering A minor and C major tonalities of the movement as a whole, which remain undecided until an A minor cadence at the end of the coda, followed immediately by a surprising Picardy third A-major triad.

Discography