A decade after their
official formation in Prague in 1945
the Smetana Quartet made their British
debut with two works featured on this
BBC disc: Mozart’s D major and Beethoven’s
F major Op.18 No.1 quartets. When they
returned in 1956 it was with a new violist,
Milan Škampa, and renewed success. There
were repeated return visits until their
eventual disbandment in 1989. These
BBC tapings derive from a studio broadcast
in the Manchester studios in 1963 and
a concert at the Royal Festival Hall
two years later. They demonstrate all
their expected and most admired virtues.
Their Beethoven has
a pliant and flexible first movement
and some expressive intonation from
leader Jiří
Novák along with his characteristic
sweetness of tone. The most distinguished
playing falls in this second movement.
Elsewhere, though their rhythmic snap
is impressive, it’s their corporate
command of variety of mood that sets
their playing apart. The Mozart
is a delight from beginning to end.
The incisive accents of the Allegretto
sway deliciously and yet all strands
are concisely in place – remember the
Smetana always played from memory. They
take the Adagio at a well-sustained
tempo and the Allegro finale is full
of the utmost clarity of expression
and tonal homogeneity. Novák
was one of the great Mozart players
of his time and his colleagues are no
less persuasive; that is impressively
evident here. Many will be familiar
with their recordings of the Smetana
E minor but evidence of "on the
wing" performances is always instructive
and exciting. The opening movement is
taut and dramatic and they take the
Polka second movement at a firm clip
– bustly in a word - and accelerandi
and slowings down are executed with
infectious naturalness and control.
As ever, their understanding of the
Largo is unimpeachable. Comparison with
their Brno rivals, the Janáček
Quartet, shows that the Prague players
were always that bit tighter, rhythmically,
and that they tended to take a subtler
faster tempo throughout all four movements.
The slow movement is vested with remarkable
fluid intensity, speeding up, coiling
into turmoil and then relaxing and generating
an inherent rhythmic unstoppability
(see the winding inexorability of cellist
Antonín Kohout’s pizzicati).
The finale is movingly realised.
In the light of their
popularity in Britain I hope the BBC
will be devoting more releases to this
august group. And if it’s too much to
hope that their performances of more
esoteric repertoire may have been preserved
(though who wouldn’t want to catch the
performances they gave of the Bax Oboe
Quintet or Britten’s Second Quartet?)
let’s hope that whatever we get will
come soon – and often.
Jonathan Woolf
The Smetana Quartet 
