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Vitezslav Novak: Complete String Quartets on CD

Novak's complete quartets for the first time in the anointed hands

of the Stamic Quartet

For an impressive forty years, the Stamic Quartet (established in 1985) have

been enjoying countless international successes both in concert performances

and studio recordings. Just during the last fifteen years, the Supraphon label

has released albums of the ensemble featuring the first recordings of

the complete works for string quartet by J. B. Foerster (2010), Sofia Gubaidulina

(2012), and Karel Kovarovic (2019). For the Stamic Quartet's fortieth anniversary,

they have recorded this complete set of Vitezslav Novak's quartets, which also

definitely completes the ensemble's remarkable list of recordings. Nearly forty

years separate the First Quartet by Dvorak's 29-year-old pupil, inspired by

the countryside of Moravia and Slovakia and by folk music, from the Third

Quartet, with it's anxious premonitions of war. The works demonstrate

a considerable stylistic shift in the composer's musical language. From

the foundations of the musical traditions of Romanticism, through inspiration

from Moravian and Slovak folklore, Novak arrived at a personal style with integral

components including the church modes, the sonic world of Impressionism,

a polyphonic sensibility for musical structure (as is clear from the extensive

fugue of the Second Quartet), and rhythmic richness. The experienced Stamic

Quartet is the first ensemble to record Novak's complete quartets, and it has

done so with commitment that would be the envy of many young ensembles.