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Ongaku-no-Tomo Magazine, February 2025
The Talich Quartet in the Salvia Hall String Quartet Series Season 59
November 5, 2024
Tsurumi Salvia Hall, Yokohama
Program:
Antonin Dvorak: String Quartet in F major "Fragment"
Antonin Dvorak: Eight Waltzes
Bedrich Smetana: String Quartet No.1 in E minor "From My Life"
The Talich Quartet was founded in 1964 by Jan Talich Sr. and has been succeeded by outstanding musicians such as the founder's son, Jan Talich Jr. (first violin), Radim Sedmidubsky (viola), who used to play with the Pavel Haas Quartet, and Michal Kanka (cello) of the Prazak Quartet.
The Talich Quartet appeared at Salvia Hall, Yokohama, on November 5. In the second half of the concert, the quartet struck a strong chord with the audience with a performance of Bedrich Smetana's String Quartet No. 1 in E minor "From My Life", with the viola being very eloquent and full of tension from the very beginning. Kanka's virtuoso cello led the whole ensemble with a powerful sound in the last two movements. In the fourth movement, the tension never lost its intensity, from the vital dance to the final catastrophic music. Jan Talich Jr. played the famous final high E note slightly weaker than the forte specified by the score. It was a little surprise because this note is usually played fortissimo. Jan Talich Jr.'s interpretation created an effect that was clearly different from the general performance, and I had the feeling that this might be closer to the composer's intention. The quartet's performance gave a strong sense of history behind the music, including the presence of a tattered, reddish-brown sheet music (probably the old Supraphon version) on the music stands.
The concert opened with Antonin Dvorak's String Quartet in F major "Fragment," a so-called "rejected work". It was pointed out that the theme of this piece was very similar to the aria of Agate from The Magician's Archer, so the piece was discarded, although it is too good a work to be treated in this way.
" Fragment" was followed by "Eight Waltzes" by Dvorak. This work was originally written for piano and later arranged for string quartet. The Talich Quartet chose the composer's arrangement only for the first and fourth waltzes, and Jiri Kabat's arrangement for the remaining six. I felt as if I had seen a pride of the Talich Quartet as a representative of Eastern European quartets.
Kazuhiko WATANABE
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