"Nocturno Andante" genre: Chamber Music
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	"Streichquartett nr2 d-dur (1881) Nocturno Andante", watch more information under "song story" link.
	MP3.com CD: String Quartet Demo CD1 - buy it! CD: Borodin - Streichquartett Nr2 D-dur Credits: A. Borodin
	Story Behind the Song Alexander Borodin was quite different. A born natural scientist, who once described himself to Liszt as a "Sunday musician", he was a lover of chamber music and enjoyed playing classical and modern works with friends in the 1840s and 1850s. It was some time before Borodin produced chamber works of his own. But what he then composed took its place among the best music of its time, being the equal of Tchaikovsky's quartets. The balance and clarity of his string quartets (and his public commitment to the symphony without a programme) makes Borodin the odd man out among the "Novators"; all the same, he most perfectly realized their artistic ideal in human terms, and the musical structures of his quartets still contain elements closely approximating to the thinking of the Balakirev group. Borodin's String Quartet No. 2 in D is a model of balance and inner clarity, coupled with passionate turns of phrase and glowing, powerful tonal colours. The melodic writing of the first (sonata-form) movement is particularly eloquent in the wide-ranging first subject, characterized by peaceful and eloquent cantabile tones and of course displaying typically Russian colouring. Oriental features - entirely in the manner of the "Novators" - are evident in the melismalike passages of the capricious second subject. The relatively short development is followed by a recapitulation in which the new tonal colours are particularly appealing. The following Scherzo owes its gentle, gracious course to a quaver sequence accompanied by a descending motive made up of a short note followed by a long one. This movement is a hybrid combining sonata movement and Beethoven's four-part scherzo form. The third movement, marked Nocturne, is what gives the quartet its particular popularity. And indeed there is something nocturnal about this movement with its melody in the Romantic tradition: it is night music, a love duet in fact, sometimes rising to heights of passion. The recapitulation particularly emphasizes the opening melodic idea by presenting it in canon. The last movement points towards the composer of the "Polovtsian Dances". The rhythm of the theme is based on the typical Russian "five in a bar" beat. Variety and an intelligent sequence of motives mark the Vivace: sometimes it is bright and friendly sometimes - energetic or troubled; the listener is surprised by chromatic colours only to hear these give way to elaborate harmonic refinements - it is a movement which, like the whole quartet, shows its composer to be anything but a "Sunday musician".

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