I had in mind a miserable woman, suffering, beaten, wretched, like the great Russian author Tolstoy wrote about in his Kreutzer Sonata
Janáček in a letter to Kamila Stösslová
Janáček’s first string quartet was written in 1923 when the composer was sixty-nine; it’s dedicated to the Bohemian Quartet.
Based on Tolstoy’s story of jealousy and murder, The Kreutzer Sonata, it’s a strange masterpiece, almost an opera for string quartet, one that pushes the ensemble to, and sometimes beyond, its limits.
To the score beneath the video I’ve added (in red) some of the descriptive remarks by Milan Škampa from the preface to the revised edition (1982).
00:04 – Adagio
04:27 – Con moto
09:07 – Con moto
13:32 – Con moto
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The Art of Listening 