Bohuslav Martinu
String Quartets Nos 3,4 & 5

Bis BIS-CD-1389

The Strad
The Martinu quartets are masterly works that have languished in obscurity for far too long. Recently the eponymous Martinu Quartet produced an extremely fine series for Naxos at a commendably low price, but the young players of the Emperor are, not to put too fine a point on it, in a league of their own. They tellingly choose to open with the Fifth Quartet, a blazing late-19030s masterwork whose emotional content and potency Martinu fiercely guarded, only allowing the publication of a pocket score in 1959, the year he died. The Emperor Quartet fairly tears into the opening movement, relishing its quick-fire interchanges and unquenchable rhythmic vitality, and fearlessly drives the Allegro vivo third movement towards a headlong conclusion, without sacrificing tonal command.

No less startling is the Fourth Quartet of 1937, a specially commissioned work that lay in a family archive before finally receiving its public premiere in 1960. It was published three years later and its neo-Classical gestures and expressive clarity (an extraordinary amalgam of 1920s Stravinsky, Janacek and Roussel, Martinu's former teacher) mark it out as another major contribution to the genre. Whether in the Mendelsshonian rustlings of the finale or gentle melancholy of the Adagio slow movement, the Emperor Quartet produces playing of scorching insight and commitment.

The cool objectivism of the Third Quartet is something of a creative one-off for Martinu, yet the Emperor players succeed in fully bringing the inscrutable score to life, mining its Ravelian expressive world to captivating effect. A life-like recording and authoritative liner notes round out an outstanding release.

Julian Haylock