PAVEL HAAS QUARTET

Seven years after they triumphed with Dvořák’s quartets (Gramophone Award Recording of the Year), the Pavel Haas Quartet have returned to Dvořák. For the recording of his quintets, they invited along two guests: the Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg (winner of the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition) and one of the PHQ founding members, the violist Pavel Nikl.

The violinist Veronika Jarůšková said: “We decided to make the album out of friendship. Boris Giltburg is a kindred soul to us, as a musician and a human. We first got together three years ago in the Netherlands, where we performed Dvořák’s Piano Quintet. And we could immediately feel that we understood one another completely.” The cellist Peter Jarůšek added: “We are not only connected as musicians; we also feel a personal affinity. I would say these aspects are like communicating vessels. We are close friends, and in the future we would like to perform other quintets together too, not only Dvořák’s. I personally would call the album a friendly encounter with beautiful music.”

Antonín Dvořák composed his Piano Quintet No. 2 while staying at his beloved summer house in Vysoká in the late summer of 1887. Besides drawing inspiration from the music of the Native American Iroquois tribe, which he heard in Spillville, Iowa, he built the third movement around a theme that he had previously considered for a new American national anthem. The Pavel Haas Quartet are at home in Dvořák’s music – to quote the Sunday Times: “In this repertoire, they are simply matchless today.” The new album made by the internationally acclaimed ensemble will be released by their home label, Supraphon, on 20 October 2017.

The Pavel Haas Quartet launched the 2017/18 season with three concerts in September together with the Essener Philharmoniker, conducted by Tomáš Netopil, first in Essen and subsequently at the Dvořák Prague festival at the Rudolfinum hall. In October, they are scheduled to return to Wigmore Hall in London, where this time, together with Pavel Nikl, their friend and former colleague, they will perform Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 3 in E flat major, the “American”. ”We are always happy to return to Wigmore Hall, as it is a venue harbouring a magical atmosphere, as well as a place with an exceptionally homely, kind milieu,” Veronika Jarůšková pointed out. In November, the Pavel Haas Quartet and the pianist Boris Giltburg will visit Germany, where within four concerts they will perform Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major and Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor. Their next stop will be the renowned Royal Concertgebouw hall in Amsterdam, and in December the PHQ will be appearing in Bern, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

In 2018, the ensemble will give concerts at prominent halls in Europe, including the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Musikverein in Vienna, following which they will fly off to tour South Korea, China and Taiwan. The Pavel Haas Quartet will round off their current concert season in June at the Smetana’s Litomyšl festival.