Composed: 1894; 27 minutes

On the surface, Russian composer Anton Arensky led a brilliant life—accomplished composer, virtuoso pianist, gifted conductor, and distinguished teacher, with Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Glière among his pupils. Yet his early death at 44 from tuberculosis hints at a darker side. From the outset, Arensky was prone to drinking and gambling and, when composing, he burned the candle at both ends. His father was a doctor, but little of that medical discipline carried over to the son. Rimsky-Korsakov, one of Arensky’s teachers and early champions, had scant patience for what he called the ‘dissolute course’ of his life. “Revels and card-playing led to galloping consumption,” he remarked when Arensky died in Finland. “He will be quickly forgotten.”

Rimsky-Korsakov was wrong. Even in his lifetime, Arensky scored notable successes. The elegant, lilting waltz from the Suite No. 1 for two pianos remains a favorite. The D minor Piano Trio, his most enduring large-scale chamber work, remains in the repertoire, as does the orchestral Legend. The A minor Quartet of 1894 was originally scored for the unusual but richly resonant combination of violin, viola, and two cellos—a potentially bottom-heavy texture that Arensky handles with assurance. He later arranged it for standard string quartet, published as Op. 35a in 1899.

The opening movement unfolds from a simple, somber theme that evokes a Russian Orthodox male-voice psalm. Funereal in tone, it honors Tchaikovsky, Arensky’s friend and mentor, who died the previous year. The theme proves remarkably pliant—nostalgic, ardent, tender by turn. Arensky dedicated the score to Tchaikovsky, and the second movement offers variations on Tchaikovsky’s gently melancholy ‘Legend’ from Children's Songs, Op. 54. The music is so close in spirit that it seems something Tchaikovsky himself might have penned, ending with a ghostly return of the first movement’s theme, with which it is then combined. 

The finale is the most progressive movement of all and the shortest. It opens with solemn music from a Russian Requiem Mass before yielding to a folksong celebrating the coronation of the Tsar. The tune was already famous—Mussorgsky used it in the Coronation scene of Boris Godunov, and Beethoven had woven it into the second of his Razumovsky Quartets. Treated fugally by Arensky, it propels the quartet toward a radiant, sonorous close—and begs the question as to why more composers have not written for this satisfying combination of instruments.