Leoš Janáček: Intimate Letters

Pavel Haas: String Quartet No. 2

 

Pavel Haas Quartet

 

The Pavel Haas Quartet, a young ensemble named after a significant 20th century Czech composer, has very quickly attained a place among the top quartets. The ensemble won the Prague Spring International Music Competition in May, 2005, and took first place at the prestigious Premio Paolo Borciani competition in Reggio Emilia, Italy one month later.

 

For their recording debut, the ensemble has chosen Leoš Janáček’s greatest work, the famous and often-recorded “Intimate Letters”, as well as Pavel Haas’ second string quartet.

 

Pavel Haas was one of the most promising voices in Czech muisc, and would surely  have established an international, were it not for his untimely death in Auschwitz in 1944.

 

Haas wrote the second string quartet, titled “From the Monkey Mountains”, at the age of 26 as a reminiscence of his summer holiday in the Czech-Moravian Highlands, which went by this nickname in Brno at the time. The individual movements are more or less genre images. The quartet joins forces here with the 30 year old internationally renowned percussionist from Edinburgh, Colin Currie, to present the version with percussion instruments.

 

The programme nature of the work is fully consistent with Janáček. The substance and orientation of the music, however, are entirely Haas, underscored by the prescribed ad libitum use of the jazz band.

 

Supraphon SU38772