Our recent 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 now available on Amazon.com and iTunes.
Stephen Smoliar, classical music reviewer for Examiner.com, recently reviewed this CD.
"Last September Centaur Records released a recording of the two string quartets of Leoš Janáček, recorded in the Lee Theater of the Touhill Performing Arts Center in St. Louis by the Arianna String Quartet: violinists John McGrosso and David Gillham, violist Joanna Mendoza, and cellist Kurt Baldwin. This release is now available for download from ClassicsOnline, and it is a significant addition to the repertoire of recorded Janáček. Indeed, the quartets themselves are important not only for those interested in Janáček but also for anyone interested in the evolution of string quartet style.
One way to approach these quartets is through the context of the first string quartet in E minor of Janáček’s Czech predecessor, Bedřich Smetana. In that quartet Smetana moved beyond the dramatic expressiveness of the Romantic movement to a more deliberate effort to capture narrative itself. Smetana called his quartet “From My Life;” but it was far more than an autobiographical reflection. Rather, it was an attempt to narrate the impact of the onset of deafness on his life story; and to this day it remains one of the most harrowing compositions in the chamber music literature.
From this narrative point of view, it is thus worth noting that Janáček did not undertake the composition of a string quartet until he had completed two of his major operas, Jenůfa (1904) andKáťa Kabanová (1921), both named for their heroines, both of whom contend with intense sexual repression. In this context it is not surprising that the inspiration for Janáček’s first string quartet, composed in 1923, should be a novella by Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata. In this case the protagonist is male, and his is the narrating voice of the text. The plot bundles the intensity of sexual abstinence, jealously, and, ultimately, murder, all disclosed through the voice of the murderer.
This makes Janáček’s quartet an ambitious undertaking. It also poses a challenge to performers. The quartet must embody this one (clearly mentally unstable) narrating voice through the integration of their four parts. I have heard this work performed in recital several times; and the intensity of its impact makes it a logical successor to “From My Life.” The Arianna String Quartet has now established themselves as being up to evoking every ounce of that intensity through their performance on this recent recording.
If that were not enough, however, they couple the “Kreutzer Sonata” quartet with Janáček’s second quartet. In many ways this follows up on his first quartet by assimilating the rhetoric of “From My Life” with equally intense anguish. While the first quartet is the narrating of a repressed fictional character, the second quartet, entitled “Intimate Letters,” has Janáček himself as narrator, recounting an exchange of over 700 letters he had with a married woman 38 years younger than he was. Many regard those letters as documents of a “spiritual friendship;” but, given how much of Janáček’s music deals with the agonies of repression, one has to question just how “spiritual” the relationship was in his own mind.
The Arianna performance is certainly not afraid to pursue the interpretation that these letters only barely cloak repressed desire in its starkest form. It is not surprising that this music was not performed until after Janáček died. As the old cliché goes, this was a score that was too hot for the composer to handle. It was one thing for experience a public performance of his interpretation of the agonies of a Tolstoy character and quite another for those agonies to be his own!
This is not the first recording to juxtapose these string quartets. As interest in Janáček’s music continues to grow, it is unlikely to be the last. Nevertheless, these particular performances have taken the trouble to capture the narrative essence of the music as part of its underlying logic and rhetoric, making this recording a valuable addition to any serious listener’s library."
