New York Classical Review

Catchy and melodious, Czech music has admirers everywhere. Most chamber music fans can name favorite pieces by Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček, and maybe even Josef Suk.

The concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center last Sunday at Alice Tully Hall featured all four of that Mount Rushmore of Czech composers from the Romantic and early modern eras. But if attendees expected familiar fare, that’s not what they got.

Instead, the Society dug a little deeper in those composers’ output and came up with lesser-known items that add new dimensions to listeners’ view of them.

A year after completing Má vlast (My Fatherland), his cycle of six symphonic poems that remains the epic of musical nationalism in the Romantic era, Smetana composed a modest addendum, Z domoviny (From the Homeland) for violin and piano, “more for domestic use than concert performance but without ruling it out entirely.”

And in fact, Smetana’s piece, with its two movements in moderate tempos, made an agreeably unshowy opener for Sunday’s concert. In the first movement, violinist Chad Hoopes spun out a long song that slipped in and out of major and minor in a characteristically Czech way, while pianist Sahun Sam Hong accompanied unobtrusively.

Hong stepped out with a bold solo to open the second movement, but the rest of the piece belonged to the violinist, who marked out the various dance rhythms with more polish than passion, at least until the Presto coda turned up the heat.

In the 21^st century, people in Central Europe may be wary of all things Russian, but in the 19^th and early 20^th, many Czechs suffering under Habsburg rule looked eastward to their Slavic neighbor for inspiration and support. Janáček’s Pohádka (Fairy Tale) for cello and piano sprang from his reading of a narrative poem by Vasiliy Zhukovsky, in which a tsar is captured by Kaschei the Immortal—the same evil fellow as in Stravinsky’s Firebird—and adventures ensue.

In mostly fast tempos that suggested narrative action or urgent dialogue, cellist David Requiro and pianist Hong matched wits over three movements, beginning in a “once upon a time” mood for bardic piano and pizzicato cello and proceeding to an urgent duet between the cello and the pianist’s right hand.

The second movement grew from desultory dialogue to an impassioned cello melody, and the finale reflected Zhukovsky’s happy ending with music that went from energetic to flowing to a contented decrescendo at the end. Requiro and Hong spun out the eventful tale with imagination and charm.

If Janáček’s piece was eventful because of its literary source, Josef Suk’s Opus 1, a Quartet in A minor for piano, violin, viola and cello, had the air of the 17-year-old composer trying to put all his bright ideas in one piece. This star pupil (and eventual son-in-law) of Dvořák went on to a distinguished performing career as second violinist of the Bohemian (later renamed Czech) Quartet, but at this early age he was clearly enamored of the brawny piano-and-strings sonorities of Brahms.

The piece launched with a big piano chord and assertive octaves in the strings. The first movement had its moments of lyrical relief, but it seemed a stretto passage to a forte climax was always just around the corner. The Adagio offered relief in a songful cello solo, then dialogue among the strings, but soon all four players were at it again, with whiplash mood shifts and ever-changing piano-string textures.

The piano again led the way in the dancing finale, which abounded in infectious rhythms and saucy dialogue for all players. The student seemed to sass his elders as bit with some running off the rails harmonically–although Dvořák himself played a few tricks like that in his day—before bringing the piece to a sonorous close.

The players—violinist Hoopes, violist Paul Neubauer, cellist Requiro and pianist Hong—seemed to channel their 17-year-old selves as they talked over each other and generally got in the spirit of this breathlessly ambitious music.

Antonín Dvořák was a famously late bloomer as a composer, and he wasn’t thrilled when, at the height of his fame, his publisher tried to pass off one of his early works as new. If it had been numbered accurately, Dvořák’s Quintet in G major for two violins, viola, cello and double bass, Op. 77, would have been his Op. 18—not exactly juvenilia, but not yet the renowned master of later years, either.

At its eventual publication, the piece’s five-movement layout was trimmed to a more conventional four by the omission of the second movement, a dreamy Intermezzo, which the composer eventually used in another work. On Sunday, the Intermezzo was restored to its original place, providing a restful pause after the exertions of the Allegro con fuoco first movement.

The ensemble, consisting of the above players minus pianist Hong and with the addition of violinist Stella Chen and double bassist Nina Bernat, explored the mellow sonorities of this low-pitched music without going overboard. Although she got actively involved in some passages, Bernat also discreetly provided the harmonic foundation, liberating cellist Requiro to fly high and engage the other players.

Persistent dance rhythms kept the first movement from bogging down in its low sonorities. In the brief Intermezzo, muted strings created a whole different sound world of misty long lines over pizzicato bass. The big collective upbow on the Scherzo’s opening chord seemed to provide all the lift this capricious movement needed, settling down only for an expressive violin melody in the trio section.

The three-to-a-bar rhythm of the Poco andante swayed gently under a sumptuous cello solo, then a soaring violin; a tapping rhythm arose in the middle, sparking tender conversation among the instruments. The finale mixed crisp and curvy phrases in incisive counterpoint that gave an equal role at last to Bernat’s double bass.

The CMS players brought it all off with taste, attention to balances, and enthusiasm. If this wasn’t Dvořák at his composing high noon, it made a refreshing morning cup of coffee.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performs music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Mozart and Schubert, March 28 and 30 at Alice Tully Hall. chambermusicsociety.org