String Quartet No. 2 in D major

Borodin's Second String Quartet in D major (1881) is the most popular Russian string quartet of the 19th century, and its slow movement — the Nocturne — one of the most beloved pieces of chamber music ever written. Composed as a love letter to his wife Ekaterina on their twentieth wedding anniversary, the work is a distillation of Borodin's lyrical gifts: warm, singing melodies, lush chromatic harmonies, and a natural, unforced spontaneity rare in quartet writing. The Nocturne's glowing cello melody over a pizzicato accompaniment, taken up in turn by each instrument, was later adapted as 'And This Is My Beloved' in the Broadway musical Kismet. The quartet balances Russian nationalist coloring with the formal refinement Borodin absorbed from his studies of Mendelssohn and Schumann.