Janacek: String Quartet No. 1 ‘Kreutzer Sonata’

Leoš Janáček’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ for string quartet, inspired by Tolstoy’s novella of that name. The piece was finished in fifteen days, and has a fittingly intense hue – Janáček wrote that he imagined ‘a poor woman, tormented and run down, just like…Tolstoy describes’. The music is a psychological drama with great conflict at heart, almost abandoning the fields of traditional harmony.
The Merel Quartet performed this to a sold out crowd on a warm summer evening at the Music at Plush festival.

Tags

1, cello, classical, Music at Plush, Quartet, viola, violin, 2009, strings, Mary Ellen Woodside, Meesun Hong, Alexander Besa, Rafael Rosenfeld, Merel Quartet, Kreutzer Sonata, and Janacek