EMI Classics 2 08282 2, 57:05 ****:
Recorded 1993-1994 (Janacek) and 1987 (Dvorak), this disc still provides scintillating musical experiences generated through the most auspicious meetings of synchronized talents. In the case of Leos Janacek (1854-1928), his natural penchant for modally stringent harmony found a perfect vehicle in his love for a younger, married woman, Kamila Stoesslova, expressed in the obsessive scores of his two string quartets. Taking his cue from high pitched compulsions that permeate Smetana’s autobiographical Quartet in E Minor, “From My Life,” Janacek drew (1923) upon Tolstoy’s novella “The Kreutzer Sonata,” which in turn finds in the Beethoven chamber work a symbol for the destructive throes of passion. The Alban Berg Quartett’s leader, Guenter Pichler, and the cellist Valentin Erben do their utmost to bring the blistered, sweltering heat of nervous tension to a sustained fever pitch, especially in the Con Moto second movement, a jittery attempt at a national folk idiom that succumbs to the spectacular vitus dance that consumes it. The same intrusive heat interrupts the slow movement, where the persona likely tries to take some consolation in his ecstatic agonies. That the music at moments quotes or parodies Tristan should come as little surprise. The last movement descends into personal despair after a series of yearning plaints from both Pichler and Thomas Kakushka’s throaty viola. The winds of restless passion–cross fertilized by figures from late Beethoven–easily suggest the legend of Francesca da Rimini and her doomed Paolo, a Dantesque vision of eerie beauty.
The Intimate Letters Quartet is to Janacek’s emotional life what the Lyric Suite is to Alban Berg. The first movement churns and seethes with passionate longing, the musical means placing the bow on the bridge or asking for high harmonics. The interludes of idealized romance break off into miasma and malaise, the superheated fantasies of the sick-room. Janacek wrote to his love Kamila that “our life is to be in [this quartet].” The Adagio chokes with paroxysms, either of delight or anguish, especially as expressed by the violin ostinati. Pichler’s part breaks into a strong concertante solo, the music of Bartok well nigh. The Moderato celebrates the dalliances and pleasures of love, perhaps no less a musical portrait of Kamila in elongated figures, as if she were painted by El Greco. A folk dance of angular, febrile, and exotic character concludes this essay into the molten powers of love, often stretching its wings towards a Lydian or Mixolydian resolution. Whether the dancing figures dissolve into a misty totentanz is anyone’s guess.
The Dvorak excerpt features Elisabeth Leonskaja, a fine pianist who made several fine inscriptions for Teldec. The Andante movement takes an elegant, slow dance and passes it through a series of variants melodic and harmonically fascinating, in the manner of Schubert. Valentin Erben’s articulate viola part makes excellent points, as does the sinewy violin line from Guenter Pichler. Leonskaja keeps a tight rein on the piano’s pearls, so her rendition shares much in common with the classical restraint we have from the likes of Clifford Curzon. An alternately feverish and graceful disc, certainly a worthy addition to anyone’s chamber music catalogue and a great sonic example of the Alban Quartett’s prowess in the Czech style.
–Gary Lemco
