PAVEL HAAS QUARTET

The Pavel Haas Quartet, one of the preeminent ensembles on the worldwide chamber music scene, is releasing a new album after three years, this time devoted to the string quartets of Bohuslav Martinů. The recording presents four compositions that differ expressively and formally, but that together form a powerful musical arch spanning over 20 years of the composer’s career. Just before the album’s release, we talked with the quartet players about the choice of the album’s programme, the emotions concealed in the individual quartets, and what interpreting Martinů’s music means to them.

Your new album presents quartets by Bohuslav Martinů. What led you to programme these works?

From the beginning, the idea was to present Bohuslav Martinů’s quartets not only as works in chronological order, but also as original worlds that engage with each other in a quiet but intense dialogue. We have chosen quartets numbers 5, 2, 3, and 7 because each was written in a different period of the composer’s life. Each is a reflection of different inspirations, moods, and ways of looking at musical form and expression, but the same Bohuslav Martinů is always present in them.

The Second Quartet is virtuosic and full of youthful energy – it is the quartet that reveals Martinů as an up-and-coming composer. The Third Quartet is probably the most experimental, and its musical language is unusual not only among the quartets, but also among all his works. The Fifth Quartet with its existential profundity is emotionally intense, and we feel it is the most musically significant. The Seventh Quartet brings his quartet world to a close with a return to classical form and emotional balance. We find it very interesting how these different moments in the composer’s life resonate with each other when we put them side by side.

What do you see as the most individual aspect of Martinů’s quartet language?

Ludwig van Beethoven set the example of using the string quartet as a medium for saying something very personal, and Bohuslav Martinů is no exception. He saw the string quartet as a return to something highly personal, even intimate, expressing quiet and sincere feelings.

In a quartet, there is no room for masks – every voice is exposed, and every motif is clear and distinct. Even if his musical language is often rhythmically pulsating and layered melodically and harmonically, it never loses contact with humanity and with something intimately familiar that naturally draws close to the listener. It’s not music that forces itself on you – instead, it is the kind of music that will let you enter if you are able to tune in.

Quartet No. 5 was composed in 1938 in Paris. In its interpretation, how did you work with the composition’s emotions, and how does its energy differ from the post-war Seventh Quartet?

Martinů wrote his Fifth Quartet in a state of emotional turmoil. He had fallen in love with his pupil, the young composer Vítězslava Kaprálová, and although he was already married, his relationship with her carried enormous emotional weight. He dedicated this quartet to her, and it is no coincidence that it is one of most passionate and dramatic chamber works. It is music that feels like an outpouring of emotion – tempestuous and very sorrowful at times. We feel the Fifth Quartet as a story of forbidden, fateful love with a powerful sense of imbalance and emotional heartbreak.

On the other hand, the Seventh Quartet was written nine years later in America, and it is dedicated to the composer’s wife Charlotte. It’s a world with a completely different emotional outlook, much more joyous and more stable. The musical language is also more transparent, as if Martinů were consciously returning to a certain classical equilibrium after all of the upheaval in his life. But that does not mean the music is less personal – for example, the emotionality in the second movement is very calm and balanced. The fascinating thing is this contrast between a tempestuous exclamation of forbidden love in the Fifth Quartet and the voice of a person who has found his inner equilibrium in the Seventh. Both works, each their own ways, are about love for women.

Martinů was deeply influenced by his love for Vítězslava Kaprálová. Do you sense this relationship in the sound or the emotional level of the quartets you recorded? If so, where do you think it is most apparent?

It’s most apparent in the Fifth Quartet, which we regard as the key work of the whole album. The relationship between Bohuslav Martinů and Vítězslava Kaprálová can be felt in it very powerfully, and not only as a biographical fact, but also directly in the musical language. Their relationship is almost physically present in that quartet. It’s a musical love story – not idealised, but real, tense, dramatic. It is as if he were unable to express it in words, so he put it into inexorable rhythmic pulsation and harmonically jarring chords. This music breathes everything that goes with feelings that are forbidden and out of balance. From the first bars, you sense it is about something urgent. The harmony is restless – even in the slow parts, there are constant appearances of dissonance that never let the music relax completely. But this is not chaos – to the contrary, everything is precise and masterfully constructed, but a flame still smoulders in the expression beneath the surface.

What interesting things await the Pavel Haas Quartet in the new season that is about to begin?

In the new season, there are again concerts we are really looking forward to, both for the programmed repertoire and for interpreting it. There are several lovely return visits awaiting us, and that is something we see as a great success. Going back to the same places to play for the same public that wants to hear us again is a great honour, and it is confirmation that what we are doing makes sense. We believe that every concert is a highpoint in its own way, something that cannot be repeated. Each appearance is a new challenge for us, whether we are playing in an intimate setting or at a big festival. For us musicians, encountering the public is the most important thing – it is live contact that gives true life to music. Our orientation remains the same: looking for depth and contexts in music while bringing the public a living, meaningful, and truthful interpretation. Every season is a new challenge, and we are looking forward to all the things the coming season will bring us.