Czech Chamber Music Society • Talich Quartet

The Talich Quartet has been evolving as part of a prestigious line of musicians for more than fifty years, representing Czech musical art throughout the world. For several decades, the Talich Quartet has been recognized internationally as one of the world’s finest string quartets, and as the embodiment of the great Czech musical tradition. The Quartet was founded in 1964 by Jan Talich Sr., during his studies at the Prague Conservatory, and named in honour of his uncle Václav Talich, the renowned chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic between the years 1919 and 1939. During the 1990s, there was a gradual and complete change in personnel, rejuvenating the Quartet while continuing the tradition of its predecessors through involvement in a wide spectrum of musical engagements and recording activities. Jan Talich Jr., the current first violinist, is the son of the Quartet’s founder.

The Talich Quartet is regularly invited to prestigious chamber music festivals such as the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades, Prague Spring Music Festival, Europalia Festival, Printemps des Arts in Monte Carlo, Tibor Varga Festival of Music, and the International String Quartet Festival in Ottawa; first appearances in last years included Malta Arts Festival and Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Finland. The Talich Quartet frequently visits such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall, le Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Salle Gaveau in Paris, London’s Wigmore Hall and Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

The Talich Quartet’s recordings of the complete string quartets by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, released on the Calliope label between 2001 and 2004, have been widely praised. Other recordings include Dvořák’s “American” quartet and viola quintet (2003), Smetana’s two string quartets (2003), and a live recording of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” and Dvořák‘s Quintet (2004). The Quartet’s Janáček recording was honoured by the Gramophone with a nomination for the best chamber recording of 2006—the only recording by a string quartet to be selected. In May 2015 the BBC Music Magazine gave the Talich Quartet 5 stars for their latest CD, Dvořák: String Quartets No. 10 &11, and in 2014 Forbes magazine listed Talich’s recording of Janáček’s and Schulhoff’s String Quartets as second best classical recording (reissues) of 2014. Recent recordings include works by Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček, Kalivoda, Fibich, Schulhoff, Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel and Shostakovich.

Bedřich Smetana apparently gave his First String Quartet in E minor the nickname “From My Life” before its first public performance. He worked on the quartet from October until 29 December 1876, by which time he was already suffering from deafness. The impulse for the work’s creation was the founding of the Czech-German Chamber Music Society in Prague. The quartet was supposed to have been presented at the society’s first concert in February 1877, but the performance did not take place when the performers realised the difficulty of their task. The quartet was first heard in April 1878 at a private performance (with Antonín Dvořák playing the viola part) in the home of the composer’s friend Josef Srb, a Czech historian and writer. For the occasion, Smetana supplied the quartet with detailed commentary describing the quartet’s programme, saying he wished to “depict the course of my life in tones”. The opening movement expresses a romantic mood and the desires of youth, and there is a foreboding of future tragedy near the end, “the fateful whistling of the highest tones in my ear, which announced the onset of my deafness in 1874.” The polka in the second movement evokes joyous times, “when as a composer of dance pieces I surrounded myself with the world of youth, where I became known for my passionate dancing.” The difficulty of the middle section, Meno vivo (in D flat major), was said to have been the reason for cancelling the originally planned premiere. The third movement “recalls the bliss of my first love for the girl who later became my faithful wife.“ The tragic mood of this movement bears musical witness to the sorrow caused by the premature death of Smetana’s first wife Kateřina Otylie. The final movement is a summary of positive and tragic impressions, with the often surprising overlapping of those polarities, just as they came about in the composer’s real life.