PhilPaine.com

String Quar­tet No. 1 in A major, Op. 2 was Dvořák’s sec­ond cham­ber work. He was only 21 when he com­plet­ed it, in 1862. It was not per­formed, how­ev­er, until he revised it in 1888. The revi­sions seem to have been con­fined to some cuts to make it “lean­er”, so it is prob­a­bly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his musi­cal think­ing and abil­i­ties at that ear­ly stage. If that’s the case, then his genius shines out. It isn’t a great work, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to the divine quar­tets of his matu­ri­ty, but it shows many of his sig­na­ture qual­i­ties: the play­ful­ness, effort­less melod­ic inven­tion, and the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate beau­ty and even sweet­ness with­out cloy­ing. The first of the four move­ments has a catchy melody, but devel­ops it very con­ven­tion­al­ly. It’s in the third move­ment, Alle­gro scherzan­do, that the future Dvořák is most evi­dent. Its trio sec­tion could have been com­posed by no one else. The ani­ma­to of the final move­ment is vig­or­ous and con­fi­dent. This first quar­tet can be played strict­ly for the plea­sure it affords, not just for its pre­sen­ti­ments of great­ness. My best copy is bril­liant­ly per­formed by the Kvarte­to měs­ta Prahy.