Janáček: The Two String Quartets - The New World String Quartet

String Quartet No. 1 
(after Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata), 1923 
[1] First Movement: Adagio: Con moto 
[2] Second Movement: Con moto 
[3] Third Movement: Con moto 
[4] Fourth Movement: Con moto 

String Quartet No. 2 ("Intimate Letters"), 1928
[5] First Movement: Andante
[6] Second Movement: Adagio 
[7] Third Movement: Moderato 
[8] Fourth Movement: Allegro

Leos Janacek was a man born too soon. Success did not come to him until late in life; the majority of his best music was written after his 60th year. As a young man, his musical studies were hampered by a constant lack of funds. He had no money to buy study scores or attend concerts, or even for a practice piano. Even in matters of the heart, Janacek had to wait long to find his soul mate. At age 27, he married a young piano pupil, Zdenka Schulzova, but the union soured almost immediately and remained stormy for the rest of their lives. Janacek's true love would not even be born until 11 years after his wedding. His musical instinct, too, was ahead of his time. Much of his earlier music met with little success, partly because Janacek tried to force his 20th-century sensibilities into 19th-century molds. 

By the time Janacek reached 50 years of age, his composition career was foundering. His great ambition was to write opera, so when it became clear that his operas stood little chance of being performed outside his hometown of Brno, he turned his attention away from composition in favor of other projects. He immersed himself in ethnomusicology and the administration of his organ school in Brno. These activities brought him at least a living wage and some local renown, but even by that point Janacek and his music were vir­tually unknown outside his native Moravia. 

All that began to change in 1915 when, after years of struggle and behind-the-scenes machinations on his behalf, his opera Jenufa was finally accepted by the Prague National Opera. The premiere was a success and Janacek, now in his 60s, was encouraged to begin the creative outpouring which would last the rest of his life and result in his best music, including the two String Quartets. But while his new and rapidly expanding success provided the outlet for his music to be heard, the fuel for this astonishing creative explosion came from an altogether different source: Janacek fell in love.