Octo_Russ

Janacek - String Quartet 1 [Smetana Quartet]

Janacek makes his debut in my Blog here today, he still remains a fairly unknown Composer to me, i certainly don't know these String Quartets very well, and neither am i all too familiar with his Orchestral works, the Sinfonietta and Taras Bulba, or even his Glagolitic Mass, three works i would like to get to know more, but his String Quartets are a start, certainly not the usual fare, both are roughly only 20 minutes long, and are snatches of melody interspersed with dynamic outbursts and creative sonorities, it takes time to really get to know them. 

The Smetana Quartet is really quite old, they started up in 1945, and they ended in 1989, a 44 year existence, they made this live recording in 1980, the front cover shot is special, of the Quartet facing away from the would be audience, but showing the lovely architecture and lights of what i assume is the Dvorak Hall in Prague, Czechoslovakia, there's a gorgeous symmetry about the shot, and with the curved bended lines of the columns top left and right corners, it's of course a wide-angle lens, and you can feel the dimensions and sense of space in the hall, plus the colours are rich in red, orange, and grey, a band running across the centre holds the lettering, which separates the Quartet / audience and the hall / architecture, a really inspiring shot. 

Well i certainly enjoyed the opening of this Quartet, it has a certain mystery about it, plus the beginnings of some dynamic rhythms, but it was the fourth movement that i found the very best, it's an Adagio of an introduction [0:00-1:13], and with longing and aching from the first violin [Jiri Novak], it has a sadness there, slightly over halfway through there's a couple of very fast bowing episodes from the whole Quartet [3:01-3:08 & 3:15-3:22], sounds like waves of buzzing, really effective, after that the Feroce section of the movement comes in, and there's frantic stamping rhythms from the viola [Milan Skampa - 3:22+], and this is transferred to the second violin [Lubomir Kostecky - 3:29+], making a great background rhythm the first violin plays over, and the viola and second violin keep swapping this rhythm like a tag team, the playing really reaches a wonderful zenith with the second violin playing the most exquisitely fast rhythm very high [4:01-4:07], while at the same time the first violin is playing the main tune also very high in the tessitura, it's the most magical point of the Quartet, the Quartet players comes down from their high peak in a clever way [4:10-4:44], the closing is really inspired, a lovely coda, it's the second half of the movement where things get truly exciting, i'm glad i got the chance to 'assimilate' this Quartet today, and i'm looking forward to listing to my next helping.

Here's the Mandelbrot Quartet playing Janacek's First String Quartet on YouTube, the fourth movement starts at [13:40].