The Leipzig String Quartet sets out on yet another musical journey, and a genuine discovery is in store inasmuch as Niel Wilhelm Gade’s Quartet “Willkommen und Abschied” is being heard here for the first time in complete form. Since the Dane Gade, like Edvard Grieg, whose Quartet op. 27 is also part of this tour, had important musical roots in Leipzig, the journey also covers home turf.

During the first half of the nineteenth century the string quartet was regarded as the embodiment of absolute music. It may seem to have been a rather bold move for a young composer for Gade to have used the literary source, Goethe’s poem “Willkommen und Abschied,” for his first string quartet.

Edvard Grieg studied under Gade in Copenhagen, where he developed ideas for his Nordic music like in his Quartet op. 27. The powerful introduction of the first movement already contains the famous “Grieg motif,” from which many themes derive. Grieg himself fueled speculations about its autobiographical connections by working with his “Spielmannslied”; his quartet is a top-class chamber event in this gripping interpretation by the members of the Leipzig String Quartet.