On Sunday, March 16, 2025, the wonderful Pavel Haas Quartet played their sixth concert for Friends since their first in 2011. And like their earlier concerts, this one was remarkable – and for a reason not immediately obvious to audience members.
Five years ago, on March 8, 2020, the Pavel Haas Quartet shared the stage with pianist Boris Giltburg for a magnificent concert featuring two piano quintets. And that was the final performance for Friends before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown ended concerts for 18 months.
Just before their next concert, on March 13, 2022, the quartet asked to change the second half from Schubert’s great (and challenging) quartet D887 to Korngold’s String Quartet No. 3 due to a last-minute personal concern for one of the musicians. Aside from starting the concert a few minutes later than scheduled, we enjoyed a notably fine performance.
This time, we faced a different situation when the Quartet’s second violinist Marek Zwiebel’s violin was damaged on the way to Vancouver. After multiple e-mails and phone calls on Friday afternoon, we were able to find a replacement violin for use during the concert. We greatly appreciate the assistance of staff at Wilder & Davis, local luthiers, to loan us a suitable instrument. With experienced musicians such as they are, there was no difference to the ensemble’s music-making – and the audience was none the wiser.
The Pavel Haas Quartet gave Friends an exciting program of music by Czech-born composers on Sunday. The musicians began with Bohuslav Martinů’s String Quartet No. 3. The music was modern, intense, but with sly humour, even disguising a clever waltz. And the performance was so deeply felt that the ovation for this first piece of the afternoon had some audience members on their feet.
We heard a great change of pace and a more spacious sound in Erich Korngold’s String Quartet No. 2, written before the composer decamped from Vienna in 1934 and took his skills to Hollywood, California. The occasional waltzes in this composition were celebrated rather than disguised. This is music written in the shadow of Mahler’s symphonies, growing from that Viennese tradition. The Pavel Haas Quartet gave this masterpiece the powerful emotion for long phrases, contrasting with ebullience and spring that suits other parts of the music.
Those of us lucky enough to be in the audience had enjoyed a first half that made anything more simply icing on the cake. Again, several people were on their feet for an ovation before intermission.
After the interval, the Quartet played Antonin Dvořák’s String Quartet, Opus 61. While this is a more standard sounding work for the first few movements, the folk elements heard more regularly throughout the composer’s later pieces emerged into the mix toward the end.
All three selections of Czech music had their own particular soundscape and each had been brought out in gorgeously balanced detail by the Pavel Haas Quartet in an outstanding concert. Of course, our knowledgeable and enthusiastic audience gave this incredible ensemble a standing ovation. And the musicians rewarded the love from the audience with an encore, dedicated to the memory of our longtime board member Eric Wilson, a Love Song by Dvořák.
We hope you will help us continue spreading the love – so needed in our current world situation – on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, when the celebrated American ensemble, the Pacifica Quartet, returns to Vancouver to play for Friends.
