Markéta Cukrová & Bennewitz Quartet

The foundations of Alfred Schnittke’s (1934–1998) String Quartet No. 3 of 1983 consist of quotations from three composers spanning the Renaissance to the 20th century: Orlando di Lasso, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Dmitri Shostakovich. From fragments of Lasso’s Stabat Mater, quotations from Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge for string quartet, and the musical cryptogram “DSCH” of Shostakovich, Schnittke created a work in which contrasting styles and textures merge and permeate one another, much like the shifting fabric of our dreams.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) composed his four-song cycle to poems by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský in the early 1880s, reworking pieces from his youthful cycle Cypresses, written in 1865 shortly before his twenty-fourth birthday. Pfleger’s sentimental verses, filled with lament over unrequited love, inspired the young Dvořák to a Schubertian romanticism and tender expressiveness.

Leoš Janáček’s (1854–1928) String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters, was composed in the final year of his life. The quartet stands as a musical counterpart to the vast correspondence between Janáček and his muse, Kamila Stösslová. In May 1928 Janáček heard the Moravian Quartet rehearsing the work, but he did not live to hear its premiere, dying unexpectedly on 12 August 1928. The first performance, for critics and specialists, took place on 7 September 1928 at the Besední dům in Brno, with the Moravian Quartet. The public premiere followed on 11 September at the Brno Exhibition Centre as part of the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czechoslovakia.

The programme concludes with Dvořák’s song cycle In Folk Tone (1886), settings of Slovak and Czech folk texts. These four exquisite vocal miniatures attest to the composer’s deep affinity for the spirit and simplicity of folk poetry.