String Quartet No. 5 in G minor, H. 268

Martinů reportedly withheld this quartet's score for twenty years after completing it, which tells you something about how personal it is. It is said to have been written amid a turbulent relationship with his student Vítezslava Kaprálová, a gifted Czech composer 25 years his junior, and scholars note that the manuscript itself contains private annotations about their quarrels and reconciliations. The four movements alternate between driven, tightly argued fast music and a searching slow movement that sits quite still by comparison, giving the whole piece a restless back-and-forth quality unusual for a composer more often associated with neoclassical lightness.

What to listen for

The fourth movement opens with a slow introduction, marked Lento, where all four instruments move together in close, dense chords before the music suddenly accelerates into an Allegro that fragments those chords into quick running figures. Notice how the cello holds a steady low pulse as the two violins push against each other with overlapping melodic lines above it. The final moments pull back to a moderate tempo, bringing the opening chord texture back in a compressed, quieter form.

Recommended recording

The Pavel Haas Quartet's recording on Supraphon has been praised for the intensity and balance it brings to the outer movements, and the ensemble is frequently cited for its clarity in Martinů's dense string writing.

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