Janacek Quartet

The Vlach Quartet on Naxos give well-played, impassioned accounts of both Quartets and are warmly recorded. Moreover, the account of the Violin Sonata by Jana Vlachová and František Maly is very fine, and the Pohádka for Cello and Piano is given as touching and imaginative a performance by Mikael Ericsson as any in the catalogue.

The Vlach Quartet on Naxos give well-played, impassioned accounts of both Quartets and are warmly recorded. Moreover, the account of the Violin Sonata by Jana Vlachová and František Maly is very fine, and the Pohádka for Cello and Piano is given as touching and imaginative a performance by Mikael Ericsson as any in the catalogue.

After the excitement of hearing their bracing Bartok cycle (the Gramophone Record of the Year in 1989), I've found the Emerson's subsequent releases more than a little disappointing. ''Cold and abrasive'' was my verdict on their Beethoven/Schubert when I reviewed it for BBC Radio 3's ''Saturday Review'', and it stands. But the Smetana on this new disc is more encouraging.

In the last 30 years, the relationship between the leading Czech string quartets and Janáček two String Quartets has evolved markedly. The best Czech performers have always produced fine recordings of these extraordinary works, but more recent generations of players have pursued a different level of engagement. While performances such as that of the Talich Quartet (2005) show remarkable insight, recordings by other quartets, such as the Haas and ≤kampa, grapple with the passion and drama, occasionally even sadism in these turbulent works. The Pražák Quartet has an international reputation in Czech repertoire, in particular for their Dvořák their new recording of Janáček’s Quartets shares many of their fellow ensembles’ keen engagement with the composer’s language.

Few chamber works rise to the autobiographical level achieved in the two string quartets of Leos Janácek. The First Quartet, subtitled "Kreutzer Sonata," depicts scenes from the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy and tells the story of an adulterous wife and her resulting death at her husband's hand. Janácek himself was locked in a loveless marriage and found many parallels (without the homicide) in his life. The Second Quartet, "Intimate Letters", draws inspiration from the unrequited love affair the composer had with Kamila Stosslova and the hundreds of passionate letters he was to write to the woman half his age.

From the heart of Central Europe in the first quarter of the twentieth century comes this penetrating, challenging, occasionally disturbing, and ever rewarding music for small ensembles. The Prague-born Prazak Quartet is of course equal to the challenge. Leos Janacek’s music for string quartet show what the genre can be. Easily mistaken for a weak, limpid subset of classical music, music for quartet a la Janacek is as sinewy and energetic as it gets.

This is a brilliant idea for a CD. Composed within a time-frame of 11 years (1917-28), at a similar geographical distance from the main cosmopolitan centres of music, and with similar stylistic overlaps between late Romanticism and modernism, these two pairs of quartets make for genuinely illuminating comparison.

The title ‘Dawn to Dusk’ represents some of the contrast between the two works: Ravel’s string quartet can be seen as his first substantial musical statement, while Janácek completed the quartet ‘Intimate Letters’ only a few months before his death. Maurice Ravel wrote only one string quartet, but it is one that dramatically expanded the coloristic boundaries of the genre. Completed in 1903, while Ravel was still a student, he dedicated the work to his teacher, Gabriel Fauré. Over time, Ravel’s quartet has become known as one of the most innovative and vibrantly dynamic quartets in the repertoire.

The Talich have set down the Quartets on three occasions: for Supraphon in 1990, and for Calliope in 1985 (with Kvapil's excellent account of Book I of On an Overgrown Path as coupling) and 2004 (with the Schulhoff). It is the latter which has been reissued here.