Pavel Haas Quartet. Lakeside, Nottingham, 07 November 2024, 5 ☆☆☆☆☆. Review: William Ruff.
Photo credit: Petra Hajska
Pavel Haas Quartet. Lakeside, Nottingham, 7 November 2024,
5 ☆☆☆☆☆. Review: William Ruff.
“The Pavel Haas Quartet demonstrate why they are so special.”
The Pavel Haas Quartet are among the superstars of the chamber music world, having garnered just about every prize available, their CDs regularly chosen as ‘Recordings of the Year’ by the music magazines. So why, out of all those superlative chamber ensembles out there, is the PHQ so special? That’s not an easy question to answer but if you combine their richness of sound with their attention to the minutest of details and their extraordinary (and uncanny) rapport, then you get some way to explaining their success. Oh, and I should also mention their ability to be in two places at once: commanding the concert platform as highly individual musicians as well as selflessly melting into one artistically coherent whole.
Their Thursday concert opened with Mozart and one of his three so-called ‘Prussian’ Quartets, dedicated to ‘his Majesty, the king of Prussia’ and intended as a sort of musical CV offered by the job-hunting composer. Tactfully, Mozart made sure the cello (the king’s own instrument) was given a plum role in all three works, especially at the beginning of the slow movement of the Quartet in B flat, the one the PHQ chose to play. Their performance had everything their admirers have come to expect: irresistible panache, that trademark richness of sound and wonderfully intricate detail presented within phrasing that constantly delighted the ear. The slow movement had just the right degree of tenderness and the final two movements were lithe and lively, bursting with life yet always revealing telling detail under the surface dazzle.
The rest of their programme was much less familiar. The Pavel Haas Quartet hail from the Czech Republic, so it’s unsurprising that they have a special way with composers from their homeland. Bohuslav Martinů’s name is more familiar in the UK than his music, despite his being the most significant Czech composer of the 20th century, as well as a hugely prolific one, writing over 400 works before his death in 1959. The PHQ made an eloquent case for his music in their performance of his Quartet No 7, clearly relishing its high-octane driving motor rhythms and luminous writing for the four instruments. They also opened the ears to Martinů’s enthusiasm for music of the baroque and classical periods. The outer movements had huge rhythmic energy, with both pursuing a headlong course with frequent violent outbursts. The austerely beautiful slow movement could not have come as a sharper contrast.
In the concert’s second half they played Tchaikovsky’s 3rd Quartet. It’s odd to think that for every thousand people who know and love Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, concertos and ballets, there’s probably only a handful who know his chamber music. Perhaps the fact that the PHQ have it in their repertoire will mean a resurgence of interest in a work which is complex and subtle in structure and which contains such a wealth of melody. It also vividly evokes other Tchaikovsky works, the violin/cello duet crowning the first movement’s introduction as tenderly as a pas de deux from one of the great ballets. The slow movement is a grief-stricken funeral elegy and the PHQ allowed it to sing its way into existence with a directness that was deeply moving. Tchaikovsky was essentially a composer for the stage and the PHQ ensured that drama was at the heart of their performance. The passionate intensity of the opening movement; the razor-sharp sharing of ideas note-by-note in the scherzo; the slow movement’s theatre of grief and the frenetic ending are amongst the stand-out moments of an outstanding concert.
Pavel Haas Quartet: Veronika Jarůšková (violin), Marek Zwiebel (violin), Šimon Truszka (viola), Peter Jarůšek (cello)