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Smetana, Sibelius: String Quartets - Kocian Quartet

Smetana, Sibelius: String Quartets - Kocian Quartet

Praga Digitals  PRD/DSD 250 257

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Classical - Chamber


Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E minor "From My Life", Sibelius: String Quartet in D minor Op. 56 "Voces Intimae", Andante Festivo

Kocian Quartet


The original pairing of two musical diaries. One of them, by the composer of The Bartered Bride, is made explicit: ‘What I wanted to do was retrace the sequence of my life in music’. The other, sombre and often introspective, with its inner voices (voces intimae), in turn ghostly and diabolical, is unique in the output of the composer of Valse triste. It wavers between fear, dreaming and a return to life, initially pesante before getting lighter as it reverts back to the rustic language of the folk dance. Smetana, on the other hand, praised the polka, both ‘highbrow’ and popular, a manifestation of love and liveliness, even when the muffled echoes of this irrepressible swirl take on a funereal aspect.

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Review by John Miller - August 23, 2009

An intelligent and informative pairing, featuring musical self-communing from two nationalistic composers of very different temperament. The Praga engineers, specialists in chamber music recording, provide an outstandingly immediate and realistic sound portrait of the Kocian Quartet, enveloped by the palpable resonance of Domovina Studio in Prague. Violins are to the left and half-left, cello centre and the viola on the right, and the string sound is pure and detailed - one can almost see the rosin flying off the bows. This is probably the best recorded sound that these two well-matched string quartets have had to date, although some purists used to live performances of quartets might think that the lower range of the cello is somewhat unrealistically inflated. Nonetheless, I found the tonal allure of the Kocian Quartet made compelling listening, yielding more details of the scores than hitherto.

Smetana very much wore his heart on his sleeve, especially in his two string quartets, in which he confided his emotions at key stages of his life. His letters specify explicitly the programme embedded in the music of his first Quartet, 'From my Life'. It begins with his happy period of writing Czech Nationalist music, moves to his early romance resulting in marriage and then the first intimations (tinnitus) of the stroke which permanently removed his hearing in 1874. This appears as a long high E on the first violin during the quartet's final movement.

The Kocian's reading of Smetana's musical diary is deeply empathic and closely follows the trajectory of the unhappy events. Fine and emotional as it is, however, the Skampa Quartet in their unforgettable RBCD recording dig even deeper, being more starkly impassioned at the opening of the first movement, with a sublime transition to the second subject. In the second movement Polka they are a little faster, adding more mordant humour and clever portrayals of tipsy peasant fiddling, as written into the score by Smetana. And although the Kocian are winsome in the youthful seduction scenes of the Polka's trio, the Skampa find yet more kitsch, whimsy and tongue-in-cheek satire. In the great slow movement, the Skampa grip the heart with a stunned cello solo, capturing a young man's response to the sweet agony of falling head over heels in love for the first time. Not a 'great' performance from the Kocian then, but a satisfying and warmly expressed one.

Sibelius' Quartet in d minor 'Voces Intimae' (Intimate Voices) is thought to deal with the composer's anxiety about impending throat cancer over several years. It seems to me that the Kocian players do really get to the core of the piece, and come close to the classic Sibelius Academy Quartet's version of 'Voces Intimae'. Perhaps the Sibelius Academy Quartet's slightly faster second movement is tauter and more sinister. Their fourth movement's stark wintry whirl certainly has more bitterness, but these are minor interpretative points. The Kocian bring out the familiar Sibelian melodic, rhythmic and motivic fingerprints in each of the five movements, and reveal references to Schoenberg's 'Verklärte Nacht' at the beginning of the central Adagio di molto. Their playing of the final movement is a tour de force; this is some of Sibelius' most inspired string writing (of supreme originality) and their virtuoso technique is pushed almost to the limit as they fly faster and faster to the movement's breathless finish.

While perhaps not definitive, this is a very fine and rewarding pairing of two unique string quartets which deal movingly with the human condition in different ways. If you have not heard these works before, the Kocian will provide an excellent introduction to them in glorious sound.

Copyright © 2009 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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