{"product_id":"quatuor-pavel-haas_quatuors-a-cordes-numero-1-et-numero-2_2015","title":"Quatuors à cordes numéro 1 et numéro 2","description":"I know that Smetana’s Quartets are his absolute masterpieces, far ahead of Má vlast or The Bartered Bride, but sometimes a record is needed to confirm a certainty. The shock I felt during the opening bars of the “my life” Quartet suddenly took me back to the year I was fourteen, when I discovered the dark dramatic recitative that opens this inexhaustible score in which Janacek found the meaning of his own quartets. I alternated between the only two versions I knew then, that of the Janacek Quartet and that of the Smetana Quartet. Later, the two records by the Talich Quartet were added, then the astringent and quite stunning recording by the Lindsay Quartet. But today I am certain that these two works have found their performers. The Pavel Haas Quartet is not on its first attempt; it looks at Smetana’s two works from the other side, from the decisive perspective offered by Janacek’s quartets, of which they have left a harsh version. Read this way, the tormented lyricism of the First Quartet takes on a radical tone, sounding definitively like modern music. And the Second, which recognizes as its model only Beethoven’s late quartets, becomes under their biting bows a quasi-experimental work: listen to the blazing fire that opens the Allegro non piu moderato, then the bewildered fugue that follows. Smetana was then being pursued by madness; confinement in a psychiatric hospital would prove fatal. It is this despair, this ultimate bewilderment of a composer already shut away in his deafness for several years that the Pavel Haas Quartet lays bare. A radical and probably definitive version for this pair of terrifying masterpieces (Discophilia, Artalinna.com). (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)","brand":"Quatuor Pavel Haas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58794683990360,"sku":null,"price":23008425.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/0099925417222.jpg?v=1792017561","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/quatuor-pavel-haas_quatuors-a-cordes-numero-1-et-numero-2_2015","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}