LDV101

16 DVOŘÁK Almost contemporary with these waltzes is the Quartet Movement in F major B120 , dated October 1880 and originally intended as the first movement of a new string quartet. While Dvořák was working on his opera Dimitri , he was surprised to read in the Viennese daily Neue Freie Presse that the famous Hellmesberger Quartet – whose first violinist was none other than the leader of the Vienna Court Opera orchestra – would be playing a new quartet from his pen on 15 December 1881. Cut to the quick by this announcement, about which he had not been consulted, Dvořák abandoned the opera for a while to start writing a quartet in F major. The quotation of a theme from one of Agathe’s arias in Weber’s Der Freischüz is all too apparent, which is why Burghauser thought the composer abandoned this first draft and started again on what was to become the Quartet no.11 in C major (op.61, B121), duly completed in time for the concert in question. As for the Quartet Movement in F, which remained a torso in manuscript form, it was not premiered until 1945, by the Ondříček Quartet on Radio Prague, and published six years after that.