Giovanni Battista Viotti
Tre quartetti per due violini, viola e violoncello dedicati al fratello (WII: 13-15)
edited by Warwick Lister

(Instrumental Music, 17)

The three string quartets without opus number were written in 1812 and probably issued in 1817. Viotti himself considered them as chamber-music masterpieces, “réellement charmants, plusque celà même”. They all consist of four extensive movements, effortlessly and effectively combining the French-Italian quatuor concertant and quatuor brillant tradition with the innovative compositional principles of the ripe Vienna school. Performers are busy not only with virtuosic passages, but also with a calm and dense dialogue, based on intricate imitative and contrapuntal passages, and emphasized by a subtle use of articulation marks.

Warwick Lister is a Canadian-born violinist and independent researcher. For eighteen years he was a violinist in the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Previously he played in the Concertgebouw Orchestra, taught violin and music history at Ithaca College, New York, and was the second violinist of the Lenox String Quartet. He has contributed several articles on Giovanni Battista Viotti and related subjects to scholarly publications (Music & Letters, Early Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, Ad Parnassum, The Musical Times). In 2009 his full-length biography, Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti was published by Oxford University Press. Mr Lister has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician in Canada, the USA, The Netherlands, Berlin, Paris and Florence.