# Favorite Bartók quartet



## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I'm not gonna vote myself yet, because I find it hard to choose between the fourth and the fifth, and I have to listen to the first, second and the sixth more. But tell me your favorite of these six string quartets and if possible, reason why you prefer that one over the others.


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## Classical Review (Oct 1, 2009)

The energy and the rawness of his Fourth String Quartet have always attracted me to it. If someone asked me to pick one to review on my site, that's the one I'd go for.

FK


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## Guest (Oct 2, 2009)

Where's the "all" button? They're all different and all good. I wouldn't want to be without any of them.

But the sixth is the easiest one for me to listen to over and over, the most consistently inventive and imaginative. But really, listening to all of them, that's not really saying much.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

some guy said:


> Where's the "all" button? They're all different and all good. I wouldn't want to be without any of them.
> 
> But the sixth is the easiest one for me to listen to over and over, the most consistently inventive and imaginative. But really, listening to all of them, that's not really saying much.


Because that would be too easy  And your reasons for choosing the sixth were pretty good - if they were true I don't think you could have chosen any other, as much as you might like them.


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## JAKE WYB (May 28, 2009)

I love all of them too though 3,4 & 5 I would be choosing amongst as they are more well rounded musical conceptions and consistently enjoyable. 

I think three is perhaps the most refined and well conceived in its two-half form but i find it too short, and 5 is less striking than 4, and 4 gets my vote because I have a panchant for the 5 movement shape, and the inner three movements i find contain in each of their own way some of the greatest quartet writing there has ever been


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## MrTortoise (Dec 25, 2008)

I heard the 5th first, so for purely sentimental reasons it is my favorite.


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

I could have used two votes, one for #4 and one for #6. To me, they are equally great, and really among the best string quartets ever written. 

So, I flipped a coin, and it seems my favorite is #6.


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## cultchas (Sep 19, 2009)

Sixth here. But i love them all.


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## bdelykleon (May 21, 2009)

I picked the fifth, it was the first I heard, and it was like a revelation to me, I'd never heard Bartók before or indeed any modern music, and was really amazed with that music. So it has an aesthetic but alsa an emotional judgement in that. Musically it is also superb, I like specially ts first movement, a brilliant paraphrasis of a sonata form, specially of Beethoven's fifth, it has always amazed me. But I like equally the "inner" quartets 2-5, the outer ones I don't like that much. I don't like Bartók's very late works like the piano concerto no. 3, the concerto for orquestra, the viola concerto.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I'm a bit surprised that the sixth has most votes now. I thought the third, fifth and especially the fourth were the most popular.


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