Since winning its very first international prize at the Evian Competition in 1978, the Prazák Quartet has been collecting awards all over the world for its concerts and recordings. Their music of choice is by Czech composers, and they have become tireless in the service of Dvorák, Martinu and Smetana, whose symbolic Quartet No. 1 ?From My Life? features on the programme. Completed in 1876, in this work Smetana retraces the course of his life through music. The dense and vivid writing of each of the four movements recaptures the romantic atmosphere and joyful hustle and bustle of his youth, the memory of his first love and the warnings of impending misfortune: deafness. The Prazák Quartet’s interpretation is marvellously in harmony with the composer’s recommendation that ?the musicians have to converse with each other, as one would do in a circle of friends about facts of real importance. Nothing more.?

With
Vaclav Remes : Violin
Vlastimil Holek : Violin
Josef Kluson : Viola
Michal Kanka : Cello