1981 Janacek String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 Vinyl LP Record VG+

Description: Yes we combine shipping for multiple purchases.Add multiple items to your cart and the combined shipping total will automatically be calculated. 1981 Janacek String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 Vinyl LP Record VG+ Record Grade per Goldmine Standard: VG+ Leos JanacekSide OneString Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer”1.Adagio. Con moto4:452.Conmoto4:153.Con moto. Vivace. Andante4:004.Con moto. Adagio5:00Side TwoString Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Pages”1.Andante6:142.Adagio6:153.Moderate5:544.Allegro7:36Janacek QuartetJiri Travnicek Adolf SykoraJiri Kratochvil Karel KrafkaCritically acclaimed recordings of the basic repertoirewhich belong in every library of great music."In his two mature string quartets Leos Janacek stakesout a very convincing claim to being one of the twentieth -century's masters of the idiom. Though his musicallanguage is not as "advanced” as that of Bartdk, Janacekin his own way thinks as naturally in terms offour strings.‘Though he composed three quartet movements in the1880s, these have never been published, and the twoquartets here recorded date from 1923 and 1928respectively. . . . Both works are emotionally related toJanacek's love for Kamila Stosslova. The first objectifieshis feelings in terms of Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, a storydealing with the way in which music can inspire illicitattraction. The topic also concerned Janacek in suchother works as the opera Katya Kabanova. The SecondQuartet, from the last year of Janacek s life, wasoriginally subtitled “Love Letters" and is more subjective.Both works have an unrestrained ardor and dramaticrhetoric characteristic of Janacek’s best and mostmature music. . . .“[The Janacek group is] technically expert and ... athome in the characteristically rhetorical style ofJanacek’s music . . . the Janacek group [is] dramatic in itsrhetoric. . . . [This] is the only stereo version and hassomewhat wider-range reproduction. The stereoperspective is rather compact. . . ."- Philip HartExcerpted from High Fidelity Magazine,November, 1966All rights reserved.Leos Janacek (1854-1928) is one ofthose rare, wholly extraordinary stars inthe musical galaxies which qualify asPulsars. Unlike the steady constellations,these follow eccentric orbits andfluctuate unpredictably in luminosity.Even more than the other great musicalpulsars - Mussorgsky, Satie, and Ives -Janacek has been painfully slow toemerge from the double obscurity ofoddity and strictly provincial notoriety:first as a Czech nationalist spokesman,successor to Smetana and Dvorak; theninternationally as one of the few, trueGreat Originals of all music.Ninth of a schoolmaster’s 14 childrenborn in the East Moravian village ofHukvaldy, near the Polish border,Janacek long seemed to stagnate as ateacher, conductor, director of his ownmusic school, and a very minorcomposer known before World War Iyears only in the Moravian capitol cityBrno. And he was even unluckier in hispersonal life: after prolonged illnesses,his only son died as an infant, his onlydaughter in her early 20s in 1903 just asJanacek had completed his first majorachievement, his third opera Jenufa. Butthis, despite a 1904 Brno production,seemed destined, like its predecessors,to oblivion.That is, until a few years later, whenFate suddenly smiled not once but twiceon this unhappy nobody. By sheerchance, a prominent amateur musicianheard and became so fascinated bysome airs from Jenufa that he eventuallybrought about a 1916 Prague productionwhich launched the opera on what soonbecame international fame. And by evensheerer chance, in 1917 the then63-year-old composer met a 25-year-oldmarried woman with whom he fellmadly in what soon becamereciprocated love. Thus fired by belatedsuccess, belated happiness, and perhapsalso by the national fervor aroused byCzechoslovakia’s becoming anindependent, democratic nation, Janacekwent on in his last, incredibly fecunddecade to create a whole series ofoperas and other works which havecome to be ranked among his nativecountry’s - and the world’s - uniquelyoriginal masterpieces.There are relatively few chamberworks in this precious legacy, but theyhad been preceded by experimentaltrials now lost or destroyed: an 1880string quartet and in 1908-09 a pianotrio inspired by Tolstoy’s then-celebrated novelette The KreutzerSonata, in which the sexagenarianauthor credited the favorite Op. 47Violin Sonata with aphrodisiac powerssurely unsuspected by Beethovenhimself. The first of Janacek’s twoacknowledged quartets makes use ofsome of the trio’s materials and thegeneral notion of evoking the “eroticfrenzy’’ of Tolstoy’s story - and of hisown love for his now-companion KamilaStossova. It was composed in white heatin only a few days, Oct. 30 - Nov. 7,1923, and first performed at PragueOct. 24, 1924, by the Czech Quartet, towhich it was dedicated.Although there are the usual fourdivisions, these are not numbered asseparate movements, and within eachthere are constantly changing temposand meters (time-signatures): no lessthan 61 and 25 respectively - all in only36 miniature-score pages comprising692 measures and a performanceduration of only 18 minutes! And whilethere’s a prodigal profusion of thematicmotives (ideas tumbling all over eachother), these are less often "developed”in the orthodox-formal manner thanthey are simply repeated, combined andcontrasted in pairs, and interspersedwith dramatic, even quasi-operatic,“effects” - like tremolos played sulponticello (i.e. on the strings’ bridge). Yetthere is never any sense ofimprovisation, of the composer’s makingthings up as he goes along: the form isidiosyncratic, but it’s alwaysfirmly there.The earnest first section begins withthe alternation of a throbbing two-barAdagio motive and a more animated(Con moto) leggiero theme, but there aremany shifts of materials and pacebefore the opening motive has the lastword. Similarly, the even morepassionate second section combines andcontrasts a fleet, descending scalelikemotive and a pregnantly expressiveseven-note theme, and there are eerilymysterious sul ponticello tremoloepisodes. Simlarly, too, the third sectionopens with alternations between ahesitant (con timidezza) theme, presentedcanonically, and vigorously digging-insul ponticello quasi-tremolo outbursts.And while the last section is dominatedmore consistently by a poignantlyrhapsodic, syncopated “main” theme,there is a wide variety of treatmentsand other materials including explosivepizzicatos and sustained rhythmicostinatos before an at-first fierce, then-diminuendo ending on a yearning motiveclosely akin to that with which thewhole work began.The Second Quartet (“IntimatePages”), an even more intricate mosaicand even more nakedly emotional, wasalso composed at white heat, Jan. 29 -Feb. 19, 1928, and had been originallydedicated, as "Love Letters,” to Kamila.In his actual letters to her he describedthe (here numbered) movements asrespectively depicting their first meeting,a summer together at the LuhacoviceSpa, a vision “resembling your image,”and a “fear for you . .. that eventuallysounds not as fear, but as longingand fulfillment.”Again there is a profusion ofdisparate, contrasting thematicmaterials and constantly changingtempos and meters (63 and47 respectively in the 49 score pagescomprising 992 measures and some26 minutes of playing time). And thereare even more theatrically dramatic“effects”; tremolos and themes playedsul ponticello, harmonics, sustained trillsand ostinatos, and (in the secondmovement) running sextuplets markedflautato (i.e., to be played sul tasto,slightly over the fingerboard, in a"fluty” manner). But everything issubordinated to the evocation of thecomposer’s love-intoxicated feelings of“exultation, passionate declaration oflove, anxiety, indomitable yearning....”And how right this strange genius wasin realizing that this music is “like apiece of living flesh. I don’t think I evershall be able to write anything deeperand more truthful.”Indeed he wasn’t. He put finishingtouches on his Dostoievstian last opera,From the House of the Dead, which hehad begun a year earlier, and perhapsworked a bit on several in-progressprojects doomed never to be completed.For, walking in the woods around hisbeloved Hukvaldy birthplace, Janacekcaught a chill and within a week died ofpneumonia on August 12,1928.- R.D. Darrell lp1356

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Location: Kingsport, Tennessee

End Time: 2024-12-31T21:42:32.000Z

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