~ Liebesfreud's first recording, titled "Selected Shorts", is scheduled for release at the end of this month. Selected Shorts - Neglected Gems for String Quartet Instrumental chamber music probably took shape as an independent, self-sufficient genre late in the 17th century and composers—a hard-headed bunch, as we all know—seem to have adopted, almost immediately, a very practical policy: if you are going to require two or more people to forego the delights of the tavern and Monday Night Football for the more dubious satisfactions which music-making might provide, then you had better give them something substantial to play. This usually meant a work of several somewhat contrasted movements—four, most often—and the practice remained remarkably constant, from the Baroque “Church Sonata”, through the evolution/revolution of the sonata style (and the concomitant emergence of the String Quartet as the genre’s fundamental medium), and beyond even the aesthetic upheavals of Romanticism and Modernism. Isolated pieces for string quartet are therefore a bit anomalous and, it would seem, awkward to accommodate in concert programs, so that a certain amount of beautiful and distinguished music tends to get lost in the shuffle—hence, this recording. Think of it as a shelter for homeless quartet movements. These works are unattached for reasons that are sometimes obvious—Grieg’s was a student exercise, Mendelssohn died—and sometimes unfathomable (as with Schubert’s piece), but each one either represents its composer’s full powers or offers a glimpse of something unfamiliar in his creative persona—sometimes both. We should add that this collection is far from exhaustive; stay tuned for Selected Shorts—the sequel! The works included on the recording can be found by clicking on the "Music" tab on this homepage. Program notes were written with humor and eloquence by Liebesfreud violinist, Geoffrey Michaels.