String Quartet No. 2 (Smetana) The composition was at first received by the part of listeners and critics with hesitation, and even with objections. However, thanks to many successful interpretations (Czech Quartet, Smetana Quartet, Janáček Quartet etc.) the quartet today belongs to the great values of Czech music history and culture. String Quartet No. 2 (Smetana) Bedřich Smetana's String Quartet No. 2 in D minor is a chamber composition for string quartet. It's Smetana's last quartet. In June 1882, after composing the monumental cycle Má vlast, operas Tajemství, Čertova stěna and other works, Smetana began thinking about the creation of his second string quartet. A
String Quartet No. 15 (Villa-Lobos) String Quartet No. 15 (Villa-Lobos) String Quartet No. 15 is one of a series of seventeen works in the medium by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1954. A performance lasts approximately nineteen minutes. Villa-Lobos composed his Fifteenth Quartet in 1954, working on it at the Tamanaco Hotel in Caracas, Venezuela and completing the score in New York. It was first performed by the Juilliard String Quartet (Robert Mann and Isidore Cohen, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Claus Adam, cello) on 19 April 1958 in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., as part of