The composers whose music is featured on the present album lived and worked in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, and their fates were afflicted by the monstrous Nazi regime. Viktor Ullmann, who before WWII held the post of Kapellmeister at the New German Theatre, wrote Quartet no.3 while he was detained at the Theresienstadt ghetto-camp. Hans Krása completed the Theme and Variations in 1936, yet he only saw it performed in Theresienstadt, along with his children’s opera Brundibár. Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces reveal his zest for rhythm and dance, as well as his evidently having been inspired by the music of the Viennese salons, Italy and Spain. Pavel Haas’s Quartet no.2, dating from 1925, serves as vivid proof of the claim that the composer was the most gifted pupil of Leoš Janáček.

During the 18th century, the string quartet gained the position of the most valued and most challenging chamber music genre, and gradually became a vehicle for conveying the composer’s personal feelings. Joseph Haydn played a key role in forging the quartet’s classical form. He created almost 70 string quartets, which, along with the symphonies, constitute the largest, as well as the most significant, part of his oeuvre. Haydn accorded them the form that would serve as the model for Mozart, Beethoven and later composers. Just as fascinating as the quantity is his quartets’ sheer diversity, with each of them being singular, featuring novel (often humorous) ideas, experiments, as well as constant seeking of new possibilities of expression. The three quartets included on the present album chart the development of Haydn’s musical idiom, from Op. 17 (1771), which he wrote at the age of 40, through Op. 33, dubbed “Gli Scherzi” (1781, dedicated to the Grand Duke of Russia Pavel Petrovich, the future Tsar Paul I), to the formally experimental pieces making up Op. 54 (1788). The Bennewitz Quartet have given numerous concerts worldwide, including at the most prestigious venues (Wigmore Hall in London, Musikverein in Vienna, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, concert halls in New York, Seoul, etc.) and such renowned festivals as the Salzburger Festspiele, Lucerne Festival and Rheingau Musik Festival. At many of them, they have performed quartets by Haydn, one of their favourite composers, whose music they endow with a transparent sound, revealing their levity and sense for detail.