Takács Quartet

When you hear the opening theme of Dvorak's 'American Quartet', it's as though you're on a horse in the middle of the prairie. The sustained pentatonic character of the melodies even led to its original nickname 'Nigger Quartet'. But what came first? No one has ever traced the folk originals of all the light-hearted ditties that make this music so irresistible. Didn't all later American composers more or less follow the lead of the Czech visitor? Your guide to this unresolved question is the Takács Quartet. The string quartet that the rest of the world's string quartets have looked up to for years. Their unequalled intensity comes into play in the first work of another Czech. The feminist Janácek wanted to protest against the male oppression of women. He based his work on Tolstoy's novella 'The Kreutzer Sonata', which in turn was inspired by Beethoven's eponymous violin sonata. An unhappily married woman throws herself into the arms of an unscrupulous seducer. This is translated into profoundly modernist music. Janácek makes a raw break with tradition, using capricious freedoms that still shock to this day.