Have there been enough performances of the string quartets of Haydn and Dvorák? Have there been enough performances of the songs of
Gershwin and
Porter? The answer, of course, is no: the works themselves are endlessly fresh and eternally appealing and any performance that expresses those essential qualities will always be welcome. In these 2004 recordings of Haydn's C major Quartet, Op. 54/2, and Dvorák's A flat major Quartet, Op. 105, Poland's Szymanowski Quartet admirably captures those qualities in performances of uncanny naturalness. A highly skilled and technically adept group, the best thing about the Szymanowski's performances is its sense of improvisation: not that the group is improvising, but that the players know the works so well that they seem to be creating more than re-creating the music.
Have their been enough performances of the string quartets Grazyna Bacewicz? Not bloody likely. Outside of her native Poland, there've been next to no performances and fewer recordings of any of Bacewicz's seven quartets. But after listening to the Szymanowski Quartet's wholly persuasive performance of her neo-classical but tonally adventurous and emotionally compelling three-movement Fourth Quartet from 1951, one can only wonder why. As it did in Haydn and Dvorák, the Szymanowski seems to be creating the music as much as performing it. Caught in Avie's very warm but slightly too distant sound, this disc will be a boon to those who know Haydn's C major Quartet and Dvorák's A flat major Quartet, as well as to those who don't know Bacewicz's Fourth Quartet but think it sounds intriguing.