The Pavel Haas Quartet on Martinů

Founded in Prague, the Pavel Haas Quartet have recently celebrated twenty years of recording with ‘home’ label Supraphon. In that time they have explored the music of contemporaries Dvořák, Smetana and Janáček, not to mention the group’s namesake Pavel Haas. Yet one significant contributor to the Czech string quartet canon has been conspicuous by his absence – until now.

Bohuslav Martinů wrote seven published string quartets, part of a huge output demonstrating a remarkable versatility extending from stage works to piano music, via unusual instrumental combinations. Yet as with so many composers, the string quartet works occupy a special place in the canon. The Pavel Haas Quartet have played Martinů’s works in concert for several years and have reached the point in their careers where they are ready to share his music with the record-buying public.

To discover more, Presto spoke with the quartet’s first violinist, Veronika Jarůšková, and her husband, cellist Peter Jarůšek – and discovered that Martinů’s music was present at their first meeting. “When I started as a cellist”, recounts Peter, “I remember one of the very first pieces that I played as a kid, which was a Pastorella by Martinů. He wrote pastorellas and miniatures, small pieces for piano and cello for kids to play. I was eleven, and Veronika too, and we were doing a TV show where they were introducing new young talent. So when I met her for the very first time that time, I played Martinů’s Pastorella”…“and that was the moment that I heard Martinů for the first time!” laughs Veronika.

Peter went on to explore more of the composer’s works for cello and piano. “One of the strongest memories as a cellist was that I played the Variations on a Slovak Folksong, and the Variations on a Theme of Rossini; they were my favourite pieces ever. The Slovak variations really opened some new things for me as a kid - the sense that music is really something interesting and emotional. Before that I just liked success and applause, and can’t say I was really enjoying the music, but when I played the Variations on a Slovak Folksong for the first time, I felt some emotions, finally!”

And what was Veronika playing on the TV show? “It was Kreisler!” exclaims Peter, singing the music to his wife. “It was the Praeludium and Allegro in the Style of Pugnani, a very nice piece. We still have the show on video tape somewhere, and I have to show it to our daughter, as she is eleven now. It was at her age that we met for the very first time”, says Peter, “but we didn’t start to date until later, when we met again at the conservatoire when we were sixteen. Since then we have been together, so it is already thirty-three years!”

Their love of Martinů has grown steadily. “I think then Martinů was not one of my favourite composers from the beginning, but he is now,” says Peter. “It is not easy for listeners, you know? It is quite complicated, and there is a lot going on, with poly-harmonies and structures. You have to really think about the interpretation, and of course you always have to really analyse the music, but it is to find the things going on. “You have to find out what was going on in his mind, too”, says Veronika… “and of course there are some letters between the musicians, and the relationship between Martinů and Vítězslava Kaprálová.”

This proves a key element of the Pavel Haas Quartet’s Martinů album – but before going into detail on that, Veronika outlines some issues with the scores themselves. “On some of the music it is really impossible to read the number of the tempo, and when we played it would be too fast.” “There are metronome markings, but sometimes Martinů’s music sounds robotic or mechanical”, says Peter. “We have to really find a way to bring out the main lines and accompaniment in the same intensity. In doing that we have really spent years preparing this album.

For their release PHQ have chosen works from the cycle illustrating different aspects of Martinů’s style, over the years from the String Quartet No. 2 of 1925 to the last of the cycle, the String Quartet No. 7 published as a ‘Concerto da Camera’ in 1947. “That was the main goal, the main aim”, says Peter. “We did have the option to do a complete cycle, but we changed our minds. It’s difficult music, technically, and to play seven of them and prepare them is not easy. We decided to bring contrasting and important music together for a single album, so that is why we chose these pieces.”

The album begins with the emotional centre of the cycle, the String Quartet No. 5. It is on occasion a difficult piece, but a powerfully affecting one too. “It is a totally different planet for Martinů”, agrees Peter as Veronika nods beside him. “He was not in a very positive mood at the time, because of the circumstances of the affair with Kaprálová. He didn’t even want to have it published, so it is very personal. The other pieces are a lot more lyrical or playful in their idioms.” “There is a really raw emotion”, says Veronika, “that is not typical for Martinů, because his heart is really open”. “In his music there are not so many raw conflicts”, says Peter, “not in an aggressive style. There is gentleness and elegance, but when you are comparing the Fifth to the other quartets there is something dark and hopeless there. In some places it sounds like Shostakovich, with some militaristic writing, with irregular rhythms, which is very unusual for him.”

“He said at one point that he did not want it to be published”, says Veronika, “and that the narrative of the text belongs to Vítězslava Kaprálová”. “There are some drawings, and notes about “she’s leaving, never coming back” – very abrupt”, adds Peter. “There are little notes about the character of the music, that give you an immediate picture about exactly what he felt when he was writing, with a rhythm, a melody or a character. For me this is the major piece of the album, which is why we chose to put it as the first piece.”

“He called her ‘little song’”, says Veronika, referring to the dedicatee Kaprálová, “which was her nickname. At the end of the second movement there is a marking of ‘molto dolce’, and just this beautiful little moment for two bars.” “It’s very sweet”, says Peter, nodding, “yet the whole movement holds deep depression apart from these little lines, which give you a bit of life”. “He was not really an emotional guy”, adds Veronika. “He really released some feelings in the music, and it’s interesting when the climax of the phrase or the movement comes, he makes it clear with dynamics.”

With the Fifth as the main work, there are three works – Nos. 2, 3 and 7, carefully chosen to complement it. “The seventh, his last quartet, is where he comes back to the basic things”, says Peter. “It’s pseudo-baroque, but it is very lyrical in spells. Martinů is always very playful in these works, in this quartet and also in the second, which I like very much. It’s very difficult, too!”

He acknowledges that Martinů, a violinist with a deep knowledge and flair for string writing, also makes it more difficult. “Technically it is very challenging, and some of the intonation is almost impossible to play, but if you can make it work it really works perfectly. “With the conditions that Martinů was working in, they really needed to break the rules, with Dadaist thinking”, muses Veronika. “He was Avant-garde”, says Peter, “and while one of the centres of this movement was Paris, so was Prague – in architecture, too, with some houses of Cubist style. Martinů was experimenting a lot in his other pieces with combinations of instruments, styles, even using the theremin. All these people were trying to find a new direction, new ways to express themselves, and not to be so romantic!”

Yet still there was the figure of Kaprálová. “She was a muse to Martinů”, says Veronika. She was conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London when she died. It’s so interesting, that every artist and man seemed to be in love with her. She then actually married the writer, Jiří Mucha, and Martinů was crazy about it!” “He was much older”, notes Peter, “so I don’t know what he expected.” “He was a gentleman”, adds Veronika, and everyone loved him, but then this girl was leading him”, and you can hear that in the fifth quartet. And of course the Second World War was coming".

Is there a parallel with Janáček and Kamila Stösslová in that sense? Peter considers thoughtfully. “I think that was different, because it was more platonic, and Janáček needed her as inspiration to create great things. Something very intimate probably happened, beyond the letters. He was over fifty, she was twenty-five, and they fell in love”. “I think Janáček made a better choice”, he laughs. “He needed someone to inspire him and believed she was real without any action taking place!”

Have the Pavel Haas Quartet found that people respond to Martinů in concert more readily now? “Mostly”, says Peter. “There are also times when people are a little more afraid to bring Martinů to an audience, and the promoters are more conservative, but I must say that especially in England the reaction is extremely positive. Even if people don’t have expectations, they will come to see it, and it will open their minds to his fascinating world. These interpretations are not our final versions of the piece – as they aren’t with any composer of course.”

Does it help that they now have real conviction behind the interpretations? “We are trying our best”, says Peter modestly, “because we are lucky that we can play the instruments and that the geniuses wrote the music. Thanks to them, we can play the music – and it is not a cliché. We are very grateful as we can play this music, and we have to do our best, you know? It is important that we bring it out and make it more understandable for the audience.”

The quartet are good friends with pianist Boris Giltburg, with whom they have completed a number of exciting projects. These will soon include the piano quartets by Brahms. “Boris is amazing”, enthuses Peter warmly. “I remember during the Covid time where everything stopped, and we were away with our daughter, and I had a call with him, and he said, 'I have fewer concerts so I can now do more projects, like the complete Beethoven!' He is crazy in a very good way, and he uses his free time to work to another level.”

The quartet plan to continue expanding their discography with music of their homeland. “We do already have a plan for what we will do as a quartet, and we are doing more Dvořák – the quartets Op.105 and Op.61, in C major.” This is a piece Peter has clearly fallen for. “It is an unbelievable piece which is not played very often. I didn’t know the piece, but we played it three years back and I fell in love with it. The A flat major quartet is unbelievable, too, but this one has something special. It is a perfect piece; there are no notes missing or extra! We are looking forward to putting these pieces in our programmes and to prepare for recording, probably at the end of the year in 2026.”