Szymanowski / Janacek - String Quartets

Karol Szymanowski and Leos Janacek

String Quartets

Karol SZYMANOWSKI (1882-1937)

String Quartet No. 1, Op. 37 (1917) 

Leos JANACEK (1854-1928)

String Quartet No. 1 'Kreuzer Sonata' (1923) 

Karol SZYMANOWSKI (1882-1937)

String Quartet No. 2, Op. 56 (1927) 

Leos JANACEK (1854-1928)

String Quartet No. 2 'Intimate Letters' (1928) 

Schoenberg Quartet

Janneke van der Meer (Violin)

Wim de Jong (Violin)

Henk Guittart (Viola)

Viola de Hoog (Cello)

Release Date: September 2007

Originally recorded in 2005

Venue

Singelkerk, Amsterdam

and

Waalse Kerk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This is a brilliant idea for a CD. Composed within a time-frame of 11 years (1917-28), at a similar geographical distance from the main cosmopolitan centres of music, and with similar stylistic overlaps between late Romanticism and modernism, these two pairs of quartets make for genuinely illuminating comparison.

Gramophone

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As Antony Beaumont observes in his excellent liner notes: "To present these compositions two by two, with the great Janacek followed as 'filler' by the undeniably lesser Szymanowski, would have perhaps made for neater bibliography. Instead they are presented here in chronological sequence, as a collage." The impression remains as the Janacek quartets follow the Szymanowski that Janacek's are much better, masterpieces by comparison. But the contrasts make for a great overall set.

Janacek (1854-1928) and Szymanowski (1882-1937) were both Central European composers working in roughly the same environment as Bartok, with a range of modernist influences, yet rooted in late Romanticism, and making striking use of their local folk musics. Szymanowski's family was part of the Polish landed gentry, while the Czech Janacek came from "humble peasant stock" (Beaumont's phrase) -- his father was a schoolmaster. Szymanowski was gay, while Janacek was famously inspired in his late prolific period by the unrequited love for a much younger married woman. As Beaumont puts it, Janacek was "a staunch supporter of pan-Slavism, a man of simple beliefs and a profound admirer of Russian literature," while Szymanowski was "a devotee of French and German culture, who yearned for the South, for the exotic, for that which others considered sinful."

Harmonically, both composers stand at the boundary between late Romantism and modernism. Janacek's quartets sound much more traditional, with the standard four movements of sonata form. His style is quite unique, though, with clear folk elements interrupting any sense of listening to Brahms or Dvorak. The 'Kreuzer Sonata' quartet, for instance, based on the Tolstoy novella, features "wild, asynchronous outbursts based on a four-note figure derived from [Beethoven]." The name 'Intimate Letters' refers to the over 700 letters Janacek wrote to Kamila Stosslova, 35 years younger -- she did not write any letters back.

Szymanowski's influences included Chopin, Scriabin, Strauss, Debussy, and Ravel. While Janacek incorporated Moravian and Slavic folk music, Szymanowski's second quartet draws heavily on the highland Polish folk music of the Tatra Mountains. (The first quartet, composed in Berlin, predates Szymanowski's turn to folk music.) Organized unconventionally in three movements, the Szymanowski quartets sound more unequivocally modernist, pulling the overall set toward the modernist constellation typically inhabited by the Schoenberg Quartet.

This is a fantastic addition to the Schoenberg Quartet's discography, and highly recommended to anyone interested in early 20th century string quartets!