Concert program of pieces by two Czech “greats” will be played by the legendary Wihan Quartet. The evening will be opened by String Quartet No. 1 in E minor “From My Life” by the founder of Czech music, Bedřich Smetana. The used the chamber form for a completely different program music principle than we know from the famous My Country. As the name of the quartet suggests, it was supposed to express his subjective and personal feelings. His work on the quartet was inspired by memories of a merry and carefree youth, of dances, of first love and the girl that later became his wife. It also envisioned his own path to national art and music, endangered and almost excised by the hand of fate – his sudden loss of hearing in 1874, exacerbated by an incessant ringing in the ears, which is represented in the composition by strident high-pitched E in the first violin.

The chamber pieces of Bohuslav Martinů are usually focused on the formal play of tones, rather than any content outside of music. The second string quartet from 1925 reflects his neoclassical tendencies of the 1920s. He subjected his composition solely to the principles of music. The quartet is characterised by its breadth of colour and polyphony.

Last of his quartets, the seventh, called Concerto da camera, was written in the US in 1947. At the time, the composer was slowly extricating himself from a difficult personal situation, in part due to an unfortunate head injury caused from an accidental fall during a teaching stay in Great Barrington. The following five years, his compositional output was significantly diminished and focused mostly on shorter works or chamber music. The quartet was premiered in February 1949 by Kroll Quartet in New York.