Well Worth Exploring

'Both string performers ... prove excellent advocates for this full-blooded music.'

As an aspiring nine-year-old Viennese violinist Franz Mittler performed Schubert's Sonatina in D with seven-year-old pianist Clara Haskil. Two years later he switched to the piano and virtuoso teacher Theodor Leschetizky.

His First String Quartet in F (1909) was premiered in 1909 by the Prill Quartet — the group which first performed Hugo Wolf's String Quartet in D (1903) and Béla Bartók's Piano Quintet (1903-4), DD 77, BB 33.

Mittler studied theory with Joseph Labor (a tutor of Schoenberg) and composition with a variety of men teaching neo-Brahmsian style in both Vienna and Cologne...