String Quartet Music with Easy Violin Parts

June 19, 2012 at 06:18 PM · Sure! Have a look at the Boccherini quartets :)

June 19, 2012 at 06:24 PM · Haydn Op 74 No 3 (Rider) - only kidding ...

OR Haydn Emperor quartet ... only kidding again ...

June 19, 2012 at 10:20 PM · Karen, the title asks a different question from the text. I've never come across anything where the viola and cello do the heavy lifting while the violins have 64 straight bars of afterbeats, but there are plenty where everyone has a great part.

The Mendelssohn quartets give everyone plenty to do. Tchaikovsky op.11 will challenge everyone, and Dvorak always assumed the lower voices were as strong as the violins. The "Nocturne" movement of Borodin #2 is a cellist's dream come true, and the Glazunov "Five Novelettes" have great cello & viola parts. Mozart's "Haydn Quartets" have decent, if not fabulous, viola/cello parts. I've played one Shostakovich quartet- can't remember which at the moment- that had a to-die-for viola solo in one movement.

Lots of Haydn is, as you say, a violin concerto with everyone else just playing chuck- chuck-chuck. Shoo away one violinist and look at trios, too. Even Haydn trios have good parts for all.

June 20, 2012 at 02:47 PM · Lisa, I'm afraid I really do want easy violin parts. I inherited some quartet music recently from the collection of a former member of the orchestra, now deceased: mostly Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. I was looking through the music and found a Beethoven quartet that I also owned a recording of (Op. 132), listened, and loved the recording. Then I tried to play the 1st violin part. Um, yeah. I'd love to really work on it, if I didn't have both a big vacation and several significant other projects between now and the performance. And the second violinist has even more constraints.

I did find a few Haydn movements that I think will be okay: I will only need to spend an hour or two total on my part outside of rehearsal, the second violin can sight-read, and the viola and cello have something more interesting than boom-chick-boom-chick. Minuetto movements in particular seem to be good for this.

June 20, 2012 at 06:18 PM · In fact those two Haydn quartets I mentioned have difficult parts for 2nd, viola and cello. On the Rider in fact the cellist asked me to take it slower as he was getting nervous before a masterclass. I had to point out that after the opening bars there is a GP bar, and the cello starts on his own again, so the tempo was down to him! In the end we played it pretty fast and it worked.