Sacconi Quartet

Dvorak, Smetana and Suk String Quartets

(Sacconi Records)

Here is a superlative disc from the Sacconi Quartet, on their own label, with a treasure trove of top-drawer performances from the rich Bohemian repertoire. I absolutely love their warm, deeply idiomatic performance of Dvorak’s American Quartet, probably the best-loved and most recorded piece in all Czech chamber music. Competition is fierce in this corner. In recent times there have been new recordings of the piece from the Wihan Quartet (too reverberant and leader-dominated for this palate) and the Pavel Haas Quartet (outstanding, but aggressively in your face). To these ears the Sacconi’s version is a better choice: spacious, unforced, but losing none of the pell-mell exhilaration in the finale. And I have never heard a more characterful and sympathetic account of Smetana’s First Quartet, with a brilliant performance of the Scherzo, whose middle section is almost hilarious in its portrayal of rustic dancing. And Josef Suk’s haunting meditation on an old Czech hymn is a beauty.

Michael Tumelty