For string quartet

String Quartet

No. 10 · Frozen Dreams

Lera Auerbach’s tenth numbered string quartet, Frozen Dreams, is an eleven-minute chamber work for two violins, viola and cello, moving through prelude, nostalgia, obsession, tragedy and postlude.

Year 2020
Duration 11′
Scoring Two Violins
Viola · Cello
Publisher Boosey & Hawkes
/ Sikorski

Commission

Commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. Sponsored by Leonid Friedlander and Elena Landis.

Premiere

26 February 2020. Joplin — Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival; Jasper String Quartet.

Movements

  • 1. Praeludium

  • 2. Adagio molto, nostalgico sognando

  • 3. Allegro ossessivo

  • 4. Adagio tragico

  • 5. Allegro moderato

  • 6. Postludium

Work Information

Full Title
Frozen Dreams
String Quartet No. 10
Scoring
For string quartet.
Year
2020
Duration
11′
Movements
1. Praeludium
2. Adagio molto, nostalgico sognando
3. Allegro ossessivo
4. Adagio tragico
5. Allegro moderato
6. Postludium
Instrumentation
2 Vls, Va, Vc.
Commission
Commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and sponsored by Leonid Friedlander and Elena Landis.
Premiere
26 February 2020 — Joplin;
Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival;
Jasper String Quartet.
Publisher
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski for the world.
Availability
Chamber-music score and parts may be ordered through the official Boosey & Hawkes purchase page.

The Work

Frozen Dreams, Lera Auerbach’s String Quartet No. 10, unfolds in six concise movements: Praeludium, Adagio molto, nostalgico sognando, Allegro ossessivo, Adagio tragico, Allegro moderato, and Postludium.

The work’s title suggests a landscape of suspended memory: dreams held in ice, images caught between motion and stillness. Its movement markings trace a concentrated emotional arc from prelude and nostalgic dreaming through obsession and tragedy toward a final postlude.

Frozen dreams: memory suspended between nostalgia, obsession, tragedy and after-sound.

Commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and sponsored by Leonid Friedlander and Elena Landis, the quartet received its first performance at the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival in Joplin by the Jasper String Quartet.

  • Frozen Dreams A compact six-movement quartet of suspended memory and dream.
  • Arizona Friends Commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music.
  • Jasper Quartet First performed by the Jasper String Quartet.

Context

String Quartet No. 10 “Frozen Dreams” follows String Quartet No. 9 “Danksagung / Thanksgiving” in Auerbach’s numbered quartet cycle. After the Beethoven-centered architecture and philosophical questioning of the ninth quartet, the tenth turns toward a more distilled sequence of dream-images and emotional states.

As chamber music, it is presented here with the official Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski work and purchase pages rather than rental-material links.

Publisher and Materials

Published by Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski. The score and parts for this chamber work are available through the official Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski work and purchase pages.