LDV101

18 DVOŘÁK Ever since its premiere by the Kneisel Quartet in Boston on New Year’s Day 1894 – the immense success of which led the performers to give more than fifty repeat performances of it in the course of that same year – the work’s fame has remained undimmed. This is reflected in its especially abundant discography, beginning with the pioneering recordings of the Bohemian Quartet (acoustic) in 1925 and the Budapest Quartet (electrical) the following year. Written in a very short period in June 1893, the Quartet op.96 was followed just a few days later by another masterpiece, the String Quintet op.97. Dvořák was in a happy mood, getting up at five in the morning, walking along the Turkey River to listen to birdsong, playing the organ at seven o’clock Mass and chatting with his fellow Czech immigrants, with whom he rediscovered his Bohemian roots. Strictly contemporary with Debussy’s Quartet, which turns its gaze towards the East and the whole-tone scale, the ‘American’ Quartet looks towards the West and the pentatonic scale, a coincidence which shows that the two composers, so different from one another in every respect, were seeking each in his own way to renew the expressive resources of the quartet by embarking on the path of exoticism.