JANÁCEK String Quartets.
No. 1, "Kreutzer Sonata"; No. 2, "lntimate Letters".
Arianna String Quartet CENTAUR 3198 (44:12)
Although Leo Tolstoy said that "...if a work of art needs to be explained it has already failed in its purpose," he felt compelled to write an explanation of his brutal, psychologically complex, and uncharacteristic novella The Kreutzer Sonata. The explanation itself is also rather complex, and when one adds to this the complexity of Janáček’s opposition to Tolstoy's views, and the vagueness of the musical program, it is best to lay plot and sequence aside, and address the purely musical content of the String Quartet No. 1. The same can be said for the loosely programmatic "Intimate Letters." The "...pure emotion, sincerity, truth, [and] ardent love" that the composer tells us is at the heart of the matter should suffice. Both quartets are works of great dramatic breadth, placing formidable technical, poetic, and human demands on the musicians.
These performances of the Arianna String Quartet demonstrate how technical excellence, in alliance with imagination and the human heart, can come to create something truly transcendent. The players, virtually faultless in their musicianship, provide a powerful vision, and a sense of humanity more far reaching than the hard and glossy reading of the Emerson Quartet, in spite of their virtuosity, or the Smetana Quartet in spite of their florid tone.
Raymond Beegle
Fanfare September/October 2013
Our recording, Janáček String Quartets, features Leoš Janáček's riveting, emotionally-charged works "The Kreutzer Sonata" and "Intimate Letters". These two quartets, on the Centaur label, are available on Amazon.com and iTunes.
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