Smetana & Franck: String Quartets (1997)

The Juilliard Plays Franck And Smetana Quartets

The Franck string quartet and Smetena string quartet no. 1 both are inspiring, in their different ways. This admirable CD by the Juilliard String Quartet will introduce the listener to both works.

The Belgian -French composer Cesar Franck (1822 -- 1890) is one of the few composers, (Domenico Scarlatti is another), who found his own voice late in life. Franck's only string quartet in D major dates from his last year, 1890, and is not as well known as, for example, his symphony or violin sonata. In its length and complexity it is a difficult work, but it will reward the effort spent with it. The quartet is highly influenced by late Beethoven and by Schubert's G minor quartet. It is written in a cyclic form in which the opening theme recurs throughout the four movements. To add to the structural complexity of the work, the lengthy opening movement includes two sets of thematic material, an opening slow section and a subsequent quicker section. Further, materials from the second movement, a scherzo, reappear in the third movement, a meditative larghetto. And the extensive fourth movement, marked allegro molto, revisits at length material from each of the earlier three movements. (Franck borrowed this pattern from the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.)

The work is complex and lengthy and bears repeated hearings. For all that, it is a work of triumph which includes integrated themes and contrasts between choral writing reminiscent of Franck's compositions for the organ, and solo writing for each instrument. The work includes intricate passages of voice-leading, moments of deep refelction, and moments of triumph. This little-heard work may never be a popular favorite, but it is great music by a composer who persevered with his art and blossomed late in life.

Unlike Franck's quartet Bedrich Smetana's String Quartet No. 1 in E minor "From my Life" is frequently performed. This quartet is much more immediately lyrical and accessible than Franck's quartet and dates from 1876 when Smetana (1824 -- 1884) was totally deaf. The work takes a bittersweet look at the composer's past life and is replete with Bohemian folk elements. The first movement, marked "allegro vivo appassionato" is of a yearing quality which Smetana wrote to express his romantic and artistic ambitions as a youth. The second movement is a polka, with strong rhythms in the lower strings in which the composer depicts his happy days as a dancer and a rising composer. The lovely third movement, Largo sostenudo, also emphasizes the lower strings and is a lyrical, if schmaltzy, reminiscence of the composer's young love for the woman who subsequently became his wife. The finale, vivace, is replete with folk music and melancholy. Like the Franck quartet, the finale offers a reprise of earlier material The yearing figure from the opening movement returns at the conclusion of the work. But instead of returning as a figure of hope and romance, the reprise has a sad quality as the composer recollects the ambitions of youth amidst the sadness he experienced as life progressed.

The Smetana work will immediately engage the listener. The Franck quartet is more forbidding, but it is work of meditation, feeling, and triumph written in the final months of a great composer's life. This CD will have greatest appeal to experienced lovers of chamber music and to those who love the music of Cesar Franck.

Robin Friedman