Czech Chamber Music Society • Zemlinsky Quartet

No Czech string quartet can omit Smetana’s String Quartet No. 2 in D minor from its repertoire. The work’s brevity makes it all the more intense. Smetana himself recalled that while composing it, his health permitted him to write no more than a single line of score per day. Another composer celebrating an anniversary this season is Jan Novák; as of 2021, exactly 100 years have passed since his birth. From his vast oeuvre we have chosen the String Quartet No. 1 (1977). The Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 12 dates from Vítězslav Novák’s early period. Just a few years later, he was producing such works as the Slovak Suite and the opera The Zvíkov Imp. By including his composition, we are repaying a debt to this rather unjustly neglected composer from the turn of the 19^th and 20^st centuries.