Pavel Haas: Streichquartette Nr.1 & 3 on CD

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The Pavel Haas Quartet's debut album (Janacek, Haas – String Quartets, SU 3877-2) was greeted with widespread enthusiasm, winning a number of awards for the ensemble (BBC Music Magazine Award 2007, Newcomer of the Year; Classic FM Gramophone Awards 2007, Chamber Award). This September, the quartet became part of the BBC New Generation Artists program. This new album completes their recordings of the Janacek and Haas quartets, bringing practically unknown works by this noteworthy 20th century composer to the attention of music lovers today. Janacek's first quartet, with its intimacy and mounting eroticism, is uunusually close to the hearts of the young ensemble. Written in only nine days (!), this four-movement composition is Janacek's most concise and also most tragic musical drama. Janacek's student Pavel Haas wrote his first string quartet, a ten minute sonata allegro movement in fantasia style, in 1920 while still a student at Brno Conservatory, and the Haas Quartet's rendition is remarkably expressive. Haas wrote his third quartet in 1938 at the peak of his creative life. The piece is marked by the drama and tragedy of the era's rapidly burgeoning Nazi movement: in 1941 Haas would divorce his wife to save his family, in 1941 he was arrested and deported to the Jewish ghetto in Terezin, and in 1944 he was sent to Auschwitz…