Pavel Haas Quartet

The Pavel Haas Quartet from Prague is one of Europe’s leading string quartets, with a particular focus on Czech and Slovak music. This concert features an all-Czech programme. 

Bohuslav Martinů’s Fifth String Quartet is a powerful and deeply personal work. In the score, he included a number of private remarks, among them reflections on his close relationship with his student, the exceptionally gifted composer Vítězslava Kaprálová, who was 25 years his junior.

Kaprálová was on the verge of establishing herself as one of Europe’s most prominent composers when she tragically died at the age of just 25. She had only just turned 20 when she composed her First String Quartet, which opens the concert. The music breathes both optimism and melancholy.

Toward the end of his career, Antonín Dvořák was appointed professor of composition in New York. In 1895, shortly before returning to Europe and his beloved Bohemia, he began work on what would become his fourteenth and final string quartet. Here, he left all traces of America behind – geographically as well as musically. In this magnificent work, the light shines through the finely chiselled melodies, and the final movement is not only the crowning moment of the quartet, but one of the great highlights of his chamber music output.