| Review by JJ September 1, 2013 (4 of 6 found this review helpful)
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The String Quartet marked Anton Dvorak’s entire life, and it was in 1893 in the United States that he composed his twelfth String Quartet Op.96 in F major, called “American.” “Strictly contemporary with the Quartet by Debussy which looked towards the orient and tonal scales,” states Bernard Fournier, “the ‘American’ Quartet looked towards the west and pentatonic scales, a coincidence which well shows that composers that everything separated were looking, each one in his own way, to renew the expressive means of the quartet by engaging it on the road to the exotic, in the larger sense: it was not about importing folk elements, but rather about escaping the implicit dictatorship of Viennese music.” The String Quartet N°14 Op.105 was composed in 1895 and is made up of four movements. The Terzetto in C major Op.74 B 148 for two violins and alto, dating from 1887, also presents four movements of which in the second, a Larghetto, “the alto play the role of baritone at times, accompanist at others, simulating the left hand of an imaginary keyboard. The tonal splendor of the two voices often presented in canon is a thrill music lovers hadn’t heard since the duets of Hayden and Mozart” (Pierre-Emile Barbier). To celebrate their twentieth year together, the Zemlinsky Quartet here offers with this recording another wonder in honor of Czech music, and an exemplary SACD of sonic beauty.
Jean-Jacques Millo
Translation Lawrence Schulman
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