Winner of the 31st International Leoš Janáček Competition in Brno in the String Quartet category.
Leoš Janáček: String Quartet inspired by L. N. Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, JW VII/8
Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110
Béla Bartók: String Quartet No. 4 in C major, Sz. 91, BB 95
Leoš Janáček’s (1854–1928) String Quartet inspired by L. N. Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata” was composed in 1923. Its roots, however, go back to 1908, when Janáček wrote a now-lost Piano Trio inspired by the same Tolstoy novella. Its main character is a woman tormented by her despotic and pathologically jealous husband, who eventually drives her to death. “I had in mind a poor woman, tormented, beaten, crushed to death,” Janáček said, describing the theme that runs like a red thread through many of his works. The quartet, with its passionate expression, penetrates to the very core of human emotion and the most intimate spheres of the soul. The work achieved great success soon after its 1924 premiere and, even after more than a century, remains one of the most powerful compositions in the string quartet repertoire.
Piercing tragedy and deep melancholy resound in Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906–1975) String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110. The quartet was composed in 1960 during the composer’s stay in Dresden, where he had been commissioned to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, about the bombing of the city during World War II. Publicly, the work was later presented as Shostakovich’s horrified response to the destruction of Dresden by the Western Allies. In truth, however, the composer embedded in this quartet a harrowing personal confession, underscored by quotations from his own major works and by the use of his musical monogram D–S–C–H. “Music written in the blood of the heart,” as the American poet Carl Sandburg aptly described Shostakovich’s art, gave rise here to one of the 20th century’s true masterpieces.
Béla Bartók’s (1881–1945) String Quartet No. 4 in C major stands among his greatest achievements. It is imbued with elements of Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian folk music. Composed in 1928, Bartók — already internationally acclaimed as a pioneer of modern musical expression — pursued an experimental path. The composition is a unique exploration of sonorities and the technical potential of string instruments, built upon a mirror-symmetrical form filled with rugged dissonances, sharp counterpoint, and irregular rhythms. This groundbreaking work of the quartet repertoire pushes performers to the very limits of their technical abilities and presents a genuine interpretive challenge for every ensemble. Bartók dedicated the piece to the renowned Belgian Pro Arte Quartet, but the premiere was given in 1929 in Budapest by the Hungarian Waldbauer–Kerpely Quartet.
Text: Ondřej Pivoda
