Presents
Georg Druschetzky
String Quartet No.3 in D Major
Georg Druschetzky (1745-1819 Jiří Družecký in the Czech form) was born in the small Bohemian town of Jemniki, then in the Austrian Habsburg Empire. Though his primary instrument was the oboe, he also became a first rate timpanist. The latter offered him a career in the military and he served as a grenadier, rising to the rank of Regional Director of Percussion for the Austrian army. After leaving the army, he served as composer to several Hungarian and Austrian noblemen, and was eventually appointed court composer to the Archduke Joseph, then Regent of Hungary. Druschetzky spent the last decades of his life in Budapest. Though, as might be expected, he wrote a great deal of works for the oboe and other wind instruments and much military band music which included the timpany, he was a versatile and prolific composer, who wrote in virtually every genre. Among his output were many chamber music works, including 12 string quartets and 4 string quintets and several other works for various combinations of winds and strings.
Druschetzky was intimately familiar with the works of his contemporaries, in particular Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and made dozens of arrangements of their various compositions. This certainly explains why his quartets, even the early ones from the 1770s have four movements rather than three. Clearly, he followed the Viennese model as established by Haydn rather than that of the Mannheim School espoused by the Stamitzes. Druschetzky wrote quartets throughout his life and No.3 is an early work, intended for the home music making market, amateurs with modest technical accomplishments. In four short movements, Allegro, Adagio, Menuetto with trio and Presto, the Quartet is a perfect model of the Vienna Classical Style.
This pleasant unassuming work can be recommended to amateur and student groups seeking a technically undemanding work from the early Vienna Classical Style.
Parts: $17.95
