Luogo e data di registrazione		Théâtre Vevey, Vevey (Svizzera): - 18-31 agosto 1967 (Op. 41 No. 1) - 13-24 luglio 1970 (Op. 41 No. 3)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Vittorio Negri | Tony Buczynski
	Edizione LP		Philips | 6503 070 | 1 LP
	Prima Edizione CD		Vedi link alla prima edizione in long playing.
	Note		La collana "Musica da Camera" della Philips riedita negli anni '80 alcune registrazioni del Quartetto Italiano.

Most of Schumann's work can be classified in periods which coincide with successive preoccupations. First and probably foremost he was a composer of piano music. Then in 1840 came the great flood of songs. The following year 1841 was the year of orchestral works. Chamber music followed in 1842; after preliminary sketches, the first of his three string quartets was begun on June 4 and before it was completed, he began the second on June 11. The third was begun on July 8 and completed on July 22. If any doubt remained in some people's minds about Schumann's true genius as a composer, the quartets helped to settle the matter. In them, he obviously found an outlet for the "new" sounds he was hearing and about which he had written to Clara in  1838: "It is remarkable how almost all my ideas now are canonic and how I always discover the imitating voices later, often in inversion or in changed rhythms..." The flanking movements in the first Quartet, in A minor, are in sonata form and are astonishingly concise in their expositions: the brief, unassuming second subjects seem to evolve naturally from the main themes. In the finale, for instance, the second subject begins with an inversion of the first subject's opening notes. Another unusual feature of this finale is the use of what might be described as a "marker" passage - a musette-like drone on the cello with, above it, a rising diminished seventh on the viola which signals the start of the irregular recapitulation. In the coda we find a more extended musette passage in A major. The song-like Adagio of this quartets is preceded by a puckish scherzo whose theme was from a trio by Heinrich Marschner; Schumann later used it as an accompaniment to one of his songs. In the third quartet, in A major,Schumann allows himself more scope for the kind of romantic expression one expects of him. The sighing falling fifth of the introduction dominates the first movement and its inversion, a rising fourth, is the vital force in the scherzo, which consists of four variations on a restless theme in F sharp minor. The third of these is a rocking Adagio so melodious that some commentators have suggested it is the actual theme making its first appearance. A powerful waltz, almost orchestral in texture, follows before a coda, full of melodic and harmonic surprises, carries the movement to a major close. The boisterous finale plays Florestan to the  Eusebius of  the long expressive Adagio in D, worked out on a loose sonata-form pattern. The coda of the Adagioa lends its dotted rhythm to the finale`s rondo theme which alternates with two episodes before a gavotte-like “quasi” trio in F. Main theme, episodes, and “trio” theme are then recalled before a long coda which amounts to a terminal development of the rondo subject. A. David Hogarth

Illustration: Johann Jacob Gensler (1808-1845) "Alter Weidenbaum", 1842 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg)