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Recorded
in Prague, 1955, released as Supraphon LPV 298
Download ID: 250768, 434953
(Duration
43'49")
String
Quartet No. 1 (inspired by Tolstoy's
"Kreutzer Sonata")
String
Quartet No. 2 (Intimate Pages)
Play
sample movement:
Order
CDs:
"This, the first of the Smetana Quartet’s several recordings of Leos Janáček’s two chamber masterpieces, has always been among the most highly sought by collectors for its searing intensity and complete identification with the material...Pristine Classical’s remastering is remarkably good...if you can adjust your ears to the rather boxy mono sound, this disc is a must." - Fanfare, May/June 2008
Leos Janacek
(1854-1928) is perhaps best known for the music he wrote in the
very last decade of his life, most particularly the operas Kátia
Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos
Affair and From the House of the Dead.
Rather
less well known, but from this same period of great creativity, are the
two String Quartets of 1923 and 1928. Although tonal in nature, both quartets
use a much wider tonality and modality than Janacek had used in his early
works; he had by this stage long abandoned the concept of a fixed key
signature, and brings in melodic patterns based on popular Moravian intonations.
The First
Quartet can be seen as a reaction to Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata"
in which the protagonist tells fellow train travellers the story of his
married life, ending with the murder of his wife, who is falsely suspected
of being unfaithful. Janacek's music is also perhaps a reaction against
the author's attempt at solving the problem of music's affectation of
man's emotional life and his actions. In a letter written in 1924, Janacek
stated "I had in mind the wretched woman, tormented, beated and murdered",
and in the music we hear his sympathy with the woman and the passions
explored in the book, and yet Janacek's interpretation ends not in a murderer's
knife, but instead a glorification of love.
The Second
Quartet has originally been titled "Love Letters"; this was
later moderated to "Intimate Pages", though the inspiration
for the 74-year-old composer was clear in the figure of the much younger,
and married, Mrs. Kamila Stosslova. The previous year he had declared
to her: "for the last eleven years, and without even suspecting
it, you have been my protectrice from every conceivable point of view...
Wherever there is warmth of pure sentiment, sincerity, truth and ardent
love in my compositions, you are the source of it!" The Quartet
can be seen as an outpouring of bliss and passionate ardour, again drawing
on Moravian folk musicality, in free form, an almost breathless expression
of love.
"I
don't think I shall ever again be able to write anything deeper or more
truthful" wrote Janacek to his beloved; three months after the
work's première he was dead.
This wonderful
recording of Janacek's quartets was the first of several made by the Smetana
Quartet. It has long been at the top of the list of afficionados for revival,
and thanks to the masterful touch of Peter Harrison, we're delighted to
restore it to the current catalogue.
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