STAMIC QUARTET

The Stamic Quartet is celebrating an impressive four decades of artistic activity with a special gift for chamber music lovers – the first complete recording of Vítězslav Novák’s string quartets. This achievement crowns the wealth of recordings made by a group that has long been devoted to interpreting music from their home country and from around the world. Before the release of the album, a member of the Stamic Quartet, the violinist Josef Kekula, answered some questions from us.

The Stamic Quartet is celebrating its 40th year. What do you regard as the greatest milestones of your career, and how are you celebrating the anniversary?

At first glance, it was victory at the EBU International Quartet Competition in Salzburg in 1986. That helped us build our renown, and it opened the door to giving concerts around Europe and America. But a career consists of many important moments –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ a major project, an important appearance, or an encounter with an inspiring musical personality. Definitely, one of the key moments was founding the chamber music festival EuroArt Praha, which lets us realise our dreams for programming and for collaborating with exceptional musicians.

What influence has recording Vítězslav Novák’s complete quartets had on your musical interpreting and on you view of his music?

Studying his quartets was fascinating. We pass from the “Belle Époque” to the years preceding the Second World War, and those changes are reflected in his music – from passages with the dreamy sound of Impressionism to the darker sounds of the late 1930s. Novák is often said to have been an “Impressionist folklorist”, but his musical language was constantly developing, as is apparent in his Third Quartet, for example, where the expressive language of his music changes drastically.

In your career, you have been the first to record the complete quartets of several composers. What has surprised you the most about that process?

For each composer, there was something different that excited us. There was Dvořák’s unwavering faith in his own musical path, Smetana’s brilliance, clear from the first note to the last, or Foerster’s melodic invention and his effort to reflect new directions. Complete sets of recordings aren’t just a musical challenge, but also a chance to grasp a composer’s works in a broader context.

What are the challenges when playing works influenced by folklore? How do you relate to such music?

The challenges are the same as with other musical works. Folklore elements appear very often in Czech music, so one cannot avoid them. How much to emphasise them is up to the performer. Personally, I like folk music in its original form – it’s an unlimited source of inspiration.

What do you see as the role of the string quartet in music today? How do you view its future?

The string quartet still a staple in the music world. It is flexible and can react to new stimuli from various musical fields. It’s vitality is promising for the future. Whatever music will be like in fifty or a hundred years, I don’t believe anything will beat the ingenious combination of sixteen strings at communicating a musical message.

The members of the Stamic Quartet are:

Jindřich Pazdera – 1st violin; Josef Kekula – 2nd violin; Jan Pěruška – viola; Petr Hejný – cello