String Quartet No.3 Op.15 (1938)

Pavel Haas was one of the Czech Jewish composers who – with Viktor Ullman, Hans Krasa and Gideon Klein – were interned in the Nazis’ “model” concentration camp at Terezín, where they were allowed to write and make music for two or three years before being transported to Auschwitz in 1944. Although Haas completed two of his best-known works at Terezín, the Study for Strings and the Four Songs on Chinese Poetry, all three of his string quartets were composed before the German occupation. The first of them dates from the early 1920s when he was a student in Janácek’s masterclass at the Brno Conservatory, the second from his jazz-influenced mid-twenties, the third from the time of the success of his opera Sarlatán (The Charlatan) in Brno in 1938.

The opening Allegro moderato, which is propelled almost throughout by a Janacek-like syncopated rhythmic figure, features two themes from the opera. One of them is incorporated in a group of fragmentary first-subject themes jostled by the urgency which characterises much of the movement. The other, introduced by violin as the pressure is relaxed while the syncopated figure retains its presence in a varied form, is a contrasting lyrical melody which seems even more nostalgic in expression when taken up by the cello. Although the second subject is recalled, urgency is restored and prevails until, in the closing bars, it is eased away on a last recall of the rhythmic figure.

Any satisfaction Haas enjoyed with the success of Sarlatán must have been negated by the political atmosphere in Brno in at the time. While he could not have known that his music would soon be banned, that he would have to divorce his wife to protect her from persecution and that within three years he would be imprisoned, anti-Semitic activity among his fellow citizens must have been desperately worrying. Perhaps that is why the slow movement emerges as a 1938 equivalent to Suk’s 1914 Meditation on an old Czech Hymn, themes derived fromn the St Wenceslas Chorale being combined in this case with figuration from the cantillation of the synagogue.

Whatever pain the Lento expresses, it is deflected by a increasingly positive last movement in the form of a theme and variations. Introduced in octaves in the opening bars, the theme gives rise to mainly quick variations at first and then, after a more thoughtful episode in the middle, to a spirited fugue. A late recall of the opening theme culminates in as resolute a version as a string quartet can deliver.

Unheard during the composer’s lifetime, his Quartet No.3 was first performed as soon as conditions allowed in January 1946.