Quartet in D, Op 33 No 6 - Haydn
Quartet No 1 (Kreutzer Sonata) - Janacek Quartet in E minor (From My Life) - Smetana
The Panocha Quartet from Prague is a long-established, well-respected ensemble. Under the auspices of John Ruddock's Limerick Music Association it's paid periodic visits to Ireland since the mid-1970s, and it was the LMA which was behind its latest concert tour to Dublin and Limerick last week.
The opening Haydn quartet at the Royal Hospital in Donnybrook last Thursday re minded one of the smoothness of sound this group is capable of. So complete at times was the blending of sound that the sense of four individual players seemed to disappear and, with it, much of the native sense of Haydn's music.
The two Czech works, unsurprisingly, fared a lot better, but the performances struck me as patchy. The approach was highly personalised, often - especially in quieter passages - telling a lot about the Panocha's skills in quartet-playing, but rarely communicating the music's broader spans with the same conviction as moments of local detail.
