Volatile romanticism, and two chestnuts from home
The Prazak String Quartet, a respected Czech ensemble with a large discography, made a rare Boston appearance on Saturday night at Jordan Hall, presented by the
From the beginning of the first piece, Janácek's String Quartet No. 1, the Prazak seemed less concerned with the niceties of a sleekly polished and sculpted group tone or with the kind of razor-sharp ensemble precision that is the norm among most top-tier American string quartets. Rather, the Prazak favored a more fluid, visceral, and soloistic approach to ensemble, bringing a bold operatic quality to the Janácek. This was highly muscular playing driven by a kind of volatile romanticism that ultimately proved persuasive for Janácek's turbulent score.
It was interesting to hear the group's unusual take on the iconic Dvorak "American" Quartet that followed. Many ensembles play this repertory staple as a kind of sunny, feel-good quartet, the fruit of a happy visit Dvorak made to a colony of Czech farmers in Spillville, Iowa. The Prazak's interpretation was more heated and rambunctious than one often hears, with an almost breathless quality to the first movement, as if Dvorak's visit to Iowa was perhaps not the carefree sojourn we may have assumed. It felt at times as if the group could have segued directly into a work like Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" without adjusting its intensity or emotional thermometer. The highlight was the beautiful slow movement, in which the cellist Michal Kanka played his solos with a broad singing tone.
The Brahms Quintet needed more rehearsal. There is a fine line between edge-of-the-seat playing and playing that is slightly out of control, and the Brahms flitted between the two. The incredibly dense textures of the first and last movements demand real clarity of intention and execution among the inner voices, but both were lacking and the group sound was muddy. Vaclav Remes gave the first violin part a bold profile but there were some intonation lapses up high and he dropped one rapid run in the first movement altogether. The quartet's other members are Vlastimil Holek (violin) and Josef Kluson (viola). The Boston-based violist Roger Tapping, a former member of the Takács Quartet, was the guest artist in the Brahms.
It's worth noting that the Prazak performed the previous night at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, and New York got a more distinctive program. It featured a piece by Erwin Schulhoff, a fascinating Prague-born composer whose music one almost never hears, but it happens to be one of this group's specialties. By contrast, two-thirds of the Boston program was represented on a 2005 recording made by the Prazak. Its title is "The Most Famous Czech String Quartets." 