String Quartets

Luigi Cherubini was one of the most influential composers at the end of the 18th century and the early 19th. An Italian who dominated the Paris Opera, his works Lodoïska, Medée, Les Deux Journées and Eliza exerted an influence on composers such as Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner. Even Brahms, although not himself an opera composer, was influenced by Cherubini.

He was a visionary, and in places the music of Medée (1797) foreshadows Wagner. The 'rescue' operas mentioned above provided the model for Beethoven's Fidelio of 1805. Beethoven was impressed by Cherubini's Requiem in C minor, and spoke of composing a Requiem after studying the score - sadly this came to nothing.

By the time Cherubini composed his string quartets he had withdrawn from the operatic world. No.1 dates from 1814, the rest from 1829-37. Differing from the Austro- German model (as perfected by Haydn and Beethoven), Cherubini adopts a very Italian approach in which each instrument is virtually a soloist - a hark back to the concerto grosso perhaps. Cherubini's friends included Viotti, Kreutzer and Baillot - some of the greatest string virtuosi of the time - and his knowledge of the quartet form was considerable.

Despite this, his quartets have never become part of the repertoire - possibly because they do not fit the model of Haydn and Beethoven. They are, however, extremely well written, and are important and seriously underrated works that deserve a wider currency.

'For the Melos Quartett of Stuttgart's performances, both in care of preparation and in vigour and perception of execution, praise cannot be too high. This is an important issue, demonstrating a too little-known aspect of a composer whose work is slowly coming to be better valued.' Gramophone

New booklet essay by Cherubini scholar Michael Fend