Helmesberger Quartet

The Helmesberger Quartet ( German: Hellmesberger-Quartett ) is an Austrian string quartet , one of the first chamber ensembles to perform under a strong name.

Helmesberger Quartet
basic information
Years	1845-1901
A country	Austria-Hungary
City	Vein

The quartet was founded in Vienna in 1845. The first violin in it was Leopold Jansa . However, in 1849 , three other members of the quartet began performing with another first violin - Joseph Helmesberger Sr. , who led the composition for almost 40 years and first of all earned him success and reputation. The first concert of this composition was given on November 4, 1849, with a program that included works by Beethoven , Haydn and Spur . On the early posters of the quartet it was written: “Helmesberger Quartet. With the support of Messrs. Durst, Heisler and Schlesinger ” ^[1] - as if Helmesberger himself was a quartet, and the rest of the musicians only helped him - which, as Franz Kneisel noted, is still too much ^[2] . Jansa performed with three other musicians for a short time (including cellist Egidius Bortsaga , who later played with Helmesberger), the last concert took place on January 13, 1850, after which Jansa emigrated.

Subsequently, a number of prominent musicians were among the quartet participants - including violinist Adolf Brodsky and cellist David Popper . From 1875 , the son of Helmesberger Joseph Helmesberger Jr. entered the quartet as a second violin, and in 1887 the part of the first violin and the powers of the ensemble leader passed to him. The quartet ceased to exist in 1901 .

The Helmesberger Quartet has the honor of drawing widespread attention from the music community to Beethoven’s late quartets. Helmesberger and his colleagues for the first time performed String Quartet No. 15 in C major (last) by Franz Schubert ( November 27, 1850 , 22 years after its creation), a number of works by Johannes Brahms - including Piano Quartet No. 2 ( November 29, 1862 , the first Brahms’s Vienna premiere, in which he himself played the piano) and String Quartet No. 1 ( December 11, 1873 ), Anton Bruckner Quartet ( May 14, 1885 , 24 years after Helmesberger invited the composer to compose it), Alexander Tsemlinsky quartet ( 1896 ) and many other works. By order of the Helmesberger quartet, Antonin Dvořák's String Quartet No. 11 was written - however, it is not known whether the quartet was able to perform it for the first time, since the premiere scheduled for December 15, 1881 was canceled due to a fire in the Vienna Ring Theater , where it was to be held.