LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)

String Quartet No. 1 after Tolstoy ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ (1923)

 

PAVEL HAAS (1899–1944)

String Quartet No. 1 in C sharp minor, Op. 3 (1920) 13:39 (in one movement)

String Quartet No. 3, Op. 15 (1940–41)

 

Pavel Haas Quartet

 

1938 marked the apogee of Haas’ family, civic and creative life: he had been married for three years, had a two-year old daughter, and as the composer of the successful 1937 opera The Charlatan (Šarlatan), his greatest work, was a respected figure of Brno’s cultural scene. Feeling the need to express his feelings about his life in a classical way, he turned again to the string quartet. The era in which the piece was written added a dramatic tension and foreboding of tragedy to its mood; in 1938 a Jewish composer in a racially mixed city with an ever more clamorous Nazi faction must have felt the approaching threat, even if he could not predict exactly what awaited him: in 1940 he would divorce in order to protect his family, and one year later he would be apprehended and deported to the Terezín ghetto before being sent to Auschwitz in 1944). Thus from a compositional standpoint the Quartet No. 3 is not only the most mature work of Haas’ chamber repertoire, but the most mature expression of his inner life at the crossroads of his own fate, as well as the fate of the city and culture in which he had grown up.

 

“…the PHQ’s streamlined but full-blooded playing is more than welcome, and if they are lining up the first Janácek and the first and third Haas for a follow-up CD, I will be at the front of the queue to hear it. “ Gramophone - November 2007 - David Fanning

 

Winners of the Newcomer of the Year Award – BBC Music Magazine Awards 2007

 

Debut album nominated for the Gramophone Chamber Award 2007

 

Supraphon SU39222