Scherzo in D for String Quartet

The String Quartet No. 2 is a string quartet in D major written by Alexander Borodin in 1881. It was dedicated to his wife Ekaterina Protopova. Some scholars, such as Borodin's biographer Serge Dianin, suggest that the quartet was a 20th-anniversary gift and that it has a program evoking the couple's first meeting in Heidelberg. Of its four movements, the third movement, "Notturno," is the most famous. Borodin wrote the string quartet quickly in 1881 while staying at the estate of his friend, the composer Nikolai Lodyzhensky, which was located in Zhitovo, southeast of Moscow.