Talich Quartet Maintains a Surprisingly Unique Sound
February 19, 1998
By Mark Stryker, Free Press music writer

In this age of increasing internationalism and the homogenization of musical style, perhaps the single most compelling gift the Talich Quartet brings to the stage is its unique identity.

There was nothing willfully eccentric about the program - Mozart, Bartok, Janacek - or the Talich's thoughtful interpretations Wednesday at the Cranbrook Music Guild.

But there were plenty of surprises from this widely recorded Czech quartet, especially for listeners more familiar with the exquisite tonal blend of the Tokyo quartet, the machine-like precision of the Emerson quartet, the electric intensity of the Juilliard quartet or the polished sheen of the Alban Berg quartet.

Taking its cue from first violinist Jan Talich Jr., the quartet produces an especially dark, burnished mahogany tone that radiates warmth. For Mozart's early G Major Quartet, K. 156, the group also brought an easy, almost informal sense of phrasing to the music that suggested a kind of Old World charm that has all but disappeared from the concert hall. It seemed particularly lovely in the cultivated setting of the Cranbrook House library.

The sense of informality was heightened as well by the quartet's casual attire. The group began its American tour in metro Detroit, and although the player's instruments arrived in tow, their luggage did not.

The intensity level rose considerably when the quartet tackled Bartok's Sixth Quartet and Janacek's Second Quartet ("Intimate Letters"), works born of introspection but expressed through fierce attacks, a virile harmonic language, dynamic rhythms, dissonance and hard-bitten lyricism.

The Bartok Sixth is riddled with tragedy; each movement opens with a theme marked "mesto" (sad). And altough the Talich often leaped into the fray with wild and woolly aggression, most notably in the second movement's satiric march, the group somehow always retained its poise - even though intonation and precision sometimes took a backseat to color and character: It was a bewitching performance.

Many of the same qualities pervaded the Janacek Second, a veiled description of the aging composer's clandestine if unrequited affair with a much younger woman. The quartet added an idiomatic buzz to its tone, enunciating Janacek's speech rhythms with the kind of naturalness of musicians who literally grew up with this music.