BaL 15.04.23 - Janácek: String Quartet No 1, “Kreutzer Sonata”

[Mal]

Yes, did he say the [Belcea] second was 2008 or 2018?

I jotted down the date (and publisher) as 2018 (alpha). So, most likely:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8607193--jana-ek-ligeti-string-quartets

[french frank]

The Urtext score as actually published in late2007, it seems: https://www.prestomusic.com/sheet-mu...BoCmyQQAvD_BwE

I regret my score-reading skill wouldn't be equal to keeping up. Tolstoy's powerful evocation of a tormented mind will probably be more helpful in following the narrative (though I'm a bit surprised Pozdnyshev's audience didn't seek an opportunity to escape the monologue long before it came to an end).

[Mal]

There are at least two Prazak quartet performances available on Spotify. Andrew did stress it was Praga disk, mid 90s, the web site adds more details:

Janáček: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 & Sonata for Violin and Piano

Prazák Quartet (string quartet)

Praga PRD250108D

So it's this one:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0KIWsmGed4zpHf9wlGj7QR?si=vdQpG_TrRJylW4KeO4tkFQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A0KIWsmGed4zpHf9wlGj7QR

[Bryn]

There are at least two Prazak quartet performances available on Spotify. Andrew did stress it was Praga disk, mid 90s, the web site adds more details:

Janáček: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 & Sonata for Violin and Piano

Prazák Quartet (string quartet)

Praga PRD250108D

So it's this one:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0KIWs...d4zpHf9wlGj7QR

Or this, which is much harder to obtain: https://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/9650 or https://www.discogs.com/release/6208...%C3%ADnek-Jan-

[Wolfram]

Good BAL this - Erik really knows what he’s talking about even if he sounded slightly hesitant at times.

I agree with what EH says above about yesterday’s BAL. A good range of clips from a good range of recordings, backed up by knowledgable and well argued justifications. So much better than the shallow “this one is really good” comments that we are usually served these days.

[RichardB]

So the Prazak Quartet was the "winner"? I missed the programme, having been in the middle of the Atlantic heading westwards at the time.

[Nick Armstrong]

the shallow “this one is really good” comments that we are usually served these days.

Yes far too much of that… Last weekend - OT I suppose, as it wasn’t BaL but the ‘new release’ segment - the conductor bloke who’d been given the big Haitink box started by saying: “My first reaction was… Wow”. Well, thanks for that … (I reached for the fast-forward button).

[Nick Armstrong]

So the Prazak Quartet was the "winner"? I missed the programme...

Yes it was

[The Easter holiday intern in the R3 website department appears not to have emerged from their chocolate coma - no sign of the usual listing there (yet) ]

[gradus]

My thanks to Mr Levi for helping me overcome my ignorance of this piece.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I suspect that a few on this thread will already be aware of this but ,as well as having a profound grasp of this single work, from his publication list there seem to be very few aspects of Classical Music and the Third Reich that Prof Levi has not written a book or paper on. Please can he get more than the odd outing on BAL? It strikes me that in the old R3 days he’d get his own series on his own expert subject area.

[Nick Armstrong]

I suspect that a few on this thread will already be aware of this but ,as well as having a profound grasp of this single work, from his publication list there seem to be very few aspects of Classical Music and the Third Reich that Prof Levi has not written a book or paper on. Please can he get more than the odd outing on BAL? It strikes me that in the old R3 days he’d get his own series on his own expert subject area.

[french frank]

My thanks to Mr Levi for helping me overcome my ignorance of this piece.

Yep. Having now read the Tolstoy version I'm about to listen again to EL's BaL

Please can he get more than the odd outing on BAL? It strikes me that in the old R3 days he’d get his own series on his own expert subject area.

This BaL was a pretty rare glimpse of what the old R3 was. A series of anyone talking about their own expert subject area has seemed unlikely just now, but with AD having stepped down last month (I presume) who knows what his successor will (be able to) do?

[Mal]

Or this, which is much harder to obtain: https://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/9650 or https://www.discogs.com/release/6208...%C3%ADnek-Jan-

I should have been more explicit! Praga PRD250108D is specified on the BBC Record Review website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06w2121.

[Bryn]

I should have been more explicit! Praga PRD250108D is specified on the BBC Record Review website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06w2121.

That's the recording I "imported" from QOBUZ in 96/24 2-channel stereo. It was also issued in SACD format with the addition of a surround sound layer. That is the option I linked to and which is very difficult to source.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I was transfixed by this BaL. I've known and loved the work since the 70s via the prize-winning CfP/ Supraphon recording by the Janaceks but had never tried to follow the narrative links to the Tolstoy story. Since the 70s I've added the Dantes and the Gabrielis on CD, the latter bought IIRC for the Smetana coupling.

What Levi flagged for me was an increasing move away from integrated, classical-romantic performance-styles towards deliberately fragmented, expressionistic ones. Some of the latter seemed too far off the scale in (e.g) the dissonant sul ponticello disruptions. Some of these in the polka movement seemed to me way over the top, positively un-musical. But hey, there will be other views!

Uniquely for me, at the end of the programme I listened to all my recordings, all of which I'd call still at the 'integrated' end of the spectrum. The one that baffles me most is the Dantes on Meridian. I've never got on with this disc - how I wish it had been recorded by their usual label, Hyperion. It sounds distant, over-reverberant, with no brilliance to the violin tone, and this surely is essential in these quartets. But Penguin did rate it highly. Does anyone here know it? The Janacek Quartet wove its usual magic and the Gabrielis were better than I remembered, but so as to challenge my leanings towards 'integrated, classical-romantic' I've ordered the Prazaks!

Can I please return to the issue of extremism in following score markings? Many here seem to assume that this must necessarily be a good thing (more is always better?), and perhaps implicitly that earlier recordings that didn't go so far out on a limb did so out of ignorance or perhaps technical limitations.

But might they not be simply closer to what the composer actually wanted/ expected? Might not Czech tradition have its merits?

Talking of which, I see that an early recording of Janacek's Kreutzer quartet is a Supraphon set of 78s by the Ondricek Quartet is is listed in the 1952 'Record Year' volume by Sackville-West and Shaw-Taylor. Has anyone heard it? After that, the next I can find is the 1960s Supraphon by the Janacek Quartet which I and others here know and love. Shouldn't these possible embodiments of an authentic tradition be given more weight?

I still await delivery of my Prazak...