String Quartet no. 2 was written in the fall of 1927 in Warsaw. Szymanowski dedicated it to his friends Dr Olgierd Sokołowski and Julia Sokołowska; the premiere took place on 14 May 1929 in Warsaw. The Quartet, complex in form and harsh in sound, is among the more difficult of Szymanowskis works to listen to.

The work has an atypical 3-movement structure, with a scherzo-like middle movement and double fugue as a finale. In this work, the composer alluded to highland folklore via motifs relat...