Rossini – William Tell Overture (String Quartet Score)

This overture, arranged for string quartet by Carlo Martelli, had previously done service to two other operas by Rossini. However, since those two are virtually forgotten, and The Barber of Seville is one of the most popular operas ever, it is in this titular form that it is remembered.

The opera from which this overture gets its title was Rossini's first great success in the field of opera buffa. The overture, now arranged for string quartet by Carlo Martelli, follows the customary pattern for Rossini of slow introduction followed by two skittish tunes with attendant long crescendo to tutti.

Rossini retired from a highly successful and lucrative career as an opera composer before he was 40 years of age, and although he lived almost another 40 years he wrote very little more music except for some short piano pieces of a dance-like nature that he called Sins of Old Age. In 1919 Respighi gathered many of these pieces together and orchestrated them for the ever-popular ballet La Boutique Fantasque. This string quartet is the first of two medleys arranged by Carlo Martelli that includes music from the ballet.