The tenth of Dvorak's fourteen quartets, the Quartet in E flat major, Opus 51, was written in 1879 in response to a request from Jan Becker, leader of the Florentine Quartet, for a work of Czech inspiration. The work won the approval of Brahms and of Josef Hellmesberger of the Hellmesberger Quartet, who now found occasion to ask again for two of the earlier quartets, as he planned his recital series. The Slavonic Dances had had considerable success, provoking an unfortunate demand from his publisher Simrock for works of a similar kind. The quartet offers a richness of texture, a remarkable sonority, in an idiom that is essentially its own.

The first movement is in sonata-form, with its traditional three sections of exposition, development and recapitulation. The lilt of the opening cello figure, however, sets an unmistakably Slavonic mood, the music impelled forward by the insistent folk-dance rhythms that appear, sometimes in accompanying parts. For the second movement, the title Dumka is used. The word, of Ukrainian origin, implies a short piece of a melancholy cast, sometimes alternating with a more rapid section. Its use in European art-music originates with Dvorak himself. Contrast is here provided by a further element that is part of the theme dominant in the movement, now in the shape of a furiant, with its cross-rhythms. The opening brings a moving melody, accompanied by the plucked notes of the cello, the rhythmic ending of the melodic phrase highly typical of the cadences of folk-music. The slow movement proper is a Romanza in which the same richness of texture predominates, sonorities which, miraculously, never become muddy or turgid. Czech dance-forms return in the Finale, which is based on the rhythm of the skocna. The cheerful opening melody is contrasted with a second element of staider mould and the movement includes a fascinating polyphonic treatment of the material.

Writer: Keith Anderson