Janáček & Haas: String Quartets

Album review

The two string quartets of Leoš Janáček are major works of the 20th century chamber repertory, with many strong recordings available. This one, however, stands out. The Escher String Quartet devises a unique program of three works that lie on the edge between program music and realms of individual psychology, and the music gains a cumulative effect as it proceeds. The album would be worth the listener's time and money just for the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 7, of Pavel Haas, who was killed by the Nazis in 1944. Subtitled "From the Monkey Mountains" (a name for the Moravian Highlands in Brno lingo), the work has programmatic titles, but Haas insisted that it was not to be taken as representational; rather, the movements were about the states of mind the region inspired. The main attraction is the finale, "A Wild Night," which adds percussionist Collin Currie. It is a riotous piece that incorporates rollicking syncopations. As the annotations point out, Janáček's String Quartet No. 1 ("The Kreutzer Sonata") is unique in the musical literature in being a composition based on a literary work (a novella by Tolstoy) that was itself based on another piece of music, the Violin Sonata No. 9 in A minor, Op. 47 ("Kreutzer") of Beethoven. Both the Janáček sonatas have lurking erotic content. Tolstoy's tale is a right-wing Christian work whose religious position is undermined by the author's sheer literary talent, while the String Quartet No. 2 ("Intimate Letters") was an extended love letter to the composer's young mistress. The entire program is absorbing, and the Escher String Quartet brings the proper intensity without losing accuracy. Ideally, intimate sound from Potton Hall in Suffolk complements all the ideas here in one of the strongest chamber recordings of 2023.

© James Manheim /TiVo