Martinů: String Quartets (Complete)

This complete collection of Bohuslav Martinů's string quartets was recorded in the years 1979-1983, at the peak of the Panocha Quartet's career. Martinů's quartets were written over the entire span of his life, and each of them is a world unto itself. The Impressionistic "French" Quartet, and the Quartet No. 4 (Paris, 1937) were written in the period between theWorld Wars. Martinů's unique compositional identity appears for the first time, however, in the Quartet No. 2 (1925). The Quartet No. 5 and Janáček's Intimate Letters have much in common, including their romantic dimension and their passion born of an inner pressure. After the Quartet No. 6 (1946), which in a way parallels Dvořák's work during his soujourn in America, Martinů brings his quartet work to a climax with his seventh piece, the Concerto da camera, a miniature full of inner contentment, as if the composer had found time for inner contemplation andmeditation in this favorite chamber composition.