Haas / Janáček: String Quartet No. 2 (Haas) / String Quartet No. 2 'Intimate Letters' (Janáček)

The young Pavel Haas Quartet has only been playing in its current configuration since 2004. It bears the name of the Czech composer from the first half of the twentieth century who was a student of Janáček and one of the most outstanding musical talents of his time. He wrote his String Quartet no. 2 (out of a total of three) at the age of 26, three years after he finished his studies with Janáček. While the marks of his teacher on his style are unmistakable, even by this stage he has developed a distinctive individual musical personality.

The “Monkey Mountains” of the title refers to the Czech Highlands near Brno, a popular area for recreation, but despite the programmatic titles of the four movements (Landscape; Coach, coachman and horse; The Moon and I; and Wild Night) the thematic activity of the writing is such that the work presents a unified whole. You don’t need to be an expert to enjoy this music; Haas’s depiction of the coach with its (surely) lop-sided wheel and horses that canter gaily down one hill then toil up the next is ingenious and amusing. The substantial third movement, marked Largo e misterioso, contains beautifully lyrical music that returns to the “Landscape” of the first movement before its close. In contrast, the fourth movement (given here in its original version with percussion, the effects ably supplied by Colin Currie) works itself into a dancing frenzy of folk-like melodies before subsiding, finally arriving at a noisy and emphatic close.

About the ensemble and composer

The Pavel Haas Quartet, formed in Brno and named for the composer heard here, went on to become one of the most decorated young quartets of its generation, winning Gramophone’s Recording of the Year award more than once in the years following this early recording. Pavel Haas himself was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944 after being deported via Theresienstadt, making his surviving output, cut short at just 45 years old, a genuinely small body of work; recordings and performances of his music carry an additional weight as a result, and quartets bearing his name, like this one, have played a real role in keeping it in the active repertoire rather than a historical footnote.

The members of the Pavel Haas Quartet throw themselves into this work, as they do in the Janáček, which receives one of the most daring, moving and emotionally searing performances I have heard. This is a superb disc.