PMH Grant Funds Joseph Achron’s Complete String Quartets

The Russian-born violinist Joseph Achron (1886-1943) earned an early reputation as a child prodigy and later found world fame as a concert soloist. Less appreciated is that he was also “one of the greatest composers of the early 20th century.” One of Achron’s string quartet works received its modern premiere at Pro Musica Hebraica’s Spring 2009 concert (you can listen here), but many of them have never even been published. Now thanks to a grant by Pro Musica Hebraica, the Joseph Achron Society will soon publish Achron’s Complete String Quartets. These works include Chromatic String Quartet, Op. 26; Elegy in Memory of Joel Engel, Op. 62; Sinfonietta; and Four Improvisations. The 4-volume edition will also feature half a dozen transcriptions of Achron’s earlier works: the jovial Scher, Op. 42; a soulful Stimmung, Op. 32 No. 1; the Mi Chomocho from his Friday Evening Service; incidental music to the Yiddish play The Dawn, as well as newly commissioned scholarship on each individual work. To receive updates, sign up for Joseph Achron Society’s newsletter.