The Talich Quartet has been evolving as part of a prestigious line of musicians for nearly fifty years, representing Czech musical art throughout the world. 

With its legendary name, the latest generation of the Talich Quartet has been performing as a more youthful ensemble since 1998, led by Jan Talich Jr., who took over the reins from his father and is surrounded by talented musicians.They are already paving the legendary string quartet’s future, which draws on tradition and always has. 

In fifty years, the Talich Quartet has forged a style, approach and philosophy of music that the new members will carry on and make flourish. They see this as an opportunity and a challenge. They have deftly found the same lightness of tone, spontaneous expression, unpredictable accents and innate sense of popular allusion of their elders. 

The gradual change of quartet members has sometimes been a painful one, but today the Talich have imposed a style all their own.

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Talich Quartet

Talich, le nom sonne comme une légende, un incontournable. Cela fait 40 ans que ce quatuor nous enchante avec des enregistrements de qualité.
Dans ce nouveau disque Ravel/Debussy, aucune déception, au contraire, une lecture vive, enjouée, tout en nuance. Si ce quatuor était auparavant associé à la musique tchèque, il prouve aujourd’hui qu’il peut aborder sans complexe tous les répertoires.

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Until Claude Debussy's remarkable string quartet of 1893, a Germanic model had defined the genre. Debussy's was the first quartet that sounded utterly and completely French. In it, modal thematic elements and parallel chord progressions characteristic of Impressionism are paired with a coloristic finesse and thematic development that are as breathtaking as the work's visceral beauty. 
The famed Talich Quartet is featured on this new recording for the La Dolce Volta label of this cornerstone of the French repertoire.

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DEBUSSY / Quatuor à cordes en sol mineur op.80 - Assez vif et bien rythmé // Quatuor Talich

In the pantheon of 20th century Spanish composers, Joaquin Turina was the only one to devote a considerable part of his compositional talents to chamber music. He lived and studied music in Paris, where he was encouraged by the likes of D’Indy, Ravel, and Debussy. In this brief tone poem for string quartet, La Oración del Torero ("The Bullfighter’s Prayer"), the influence of Debussy can be heard, especially in the use of lush descending parallel ninth chords. The influence of music of the Andalusian Gypsies is also quite evident. This piece became one of the composer’s most popular works, often performed in an arrangement for string orchestra.

Quatuor Talich, Turina // La Oración del Torero

Janáček's First String Quartet is one of the summits of his art. But it was equalled, and possibly surpassed, by the second. At 74, he was still full of vitality and the joy of living. In 1928, the year of his death, in love more than ever with Kamila, he wrote his last and greatest masterpiece.
His two quartets are declarations: love of life, love of a woman. The intensity of the feelings summoned here can only be expressed by extra-verbals means, in a paroxysm of sound: "You know", wrote Janáček to Kamila, "sometimes the feelings are in themselves so strong that the notes conceal behind them an escape".

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Janáček, String Quartet No.2,  Intimate Letters  - Allegro

The Bohemian Quartet asked Janáček to write a string quartet for them. He had not yet seriously approached the genre, or at least, not since his years of training in Vienna, around 1880. It was his memories of Tolstoy's famous short novel "The Kreutzer Sonata" that inspired the composition. In eight days he composed this quartet in praise of woman and love, thus opposing the moral sanction raised by Tolstoy himself against the adulterous woman in his novel. In his works Janáček often shows compassion for women who are ridiculed and humiliated. Here, to bring out the raw passions that are present in the novel he uses the art of contrast and harmonic tension in gripping and anguished phrases. Through the voice of each instrument, his writing follows closely the murmurs and complaints, violence and terror experienced by the characters, thus creating a wordless drama.

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Janáček, String Quartet No.1 "The Kreutzer Sonata"  - Adagio, con moto

This work has nothing of the classical divertissement, but is rather a deeply romantic piece, although its texture does not renounce long developments or phrases or phrases irregular in rhythm and mood. It was later nicknamed the "Frühlingssextet" (Spring Sextet), obviously in tribute to Beethoven. Its elegance, subtlety and apparent naturalness conceal the difficulties the young Brahms experienced in writing this piece and which led him to ask Joachim to check the manuscript. The violinist suggested several important changes and Brahms followed his shrewd advice.

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Brahms, String Sextet No.1 in B flat major Op.18 - Andante, ma moderato

Spilville is a small town in Iowa. It was there, between 8 and 23 June 1893, that Dvořák composed his most famous chamber work, the String Quartet in F major (the "American").
Dvořák expressed his nostalgia in the great works he composed from 1892 to 1895, including the String Quintet Op.97.

Dvořák, String Quartet No.12 in F major "American" Op.96 - Allegro ma non troppo

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) is one of those unfortunate composers whose major works are obscured by the celebrity of their first performances. He composed, in the last years of his life (between 1876 and 1883), two masterpieces: two string quartets which are as unclassifiable as Beethoven’s last quartets. But this is the only similarity, because whereas for Beethoven the gradual onset of this deafness meant that he was no longer encumbered by sound and could turn his deafness to his advantage in writing music in total freedom, Smetana, who was brutally struck by deafness during the night of 19 to 20 October 1874, turned back on himself. From then on and more relentlessly than ever before, he went in quest of his own roots.

The first quartet, ‘From my Life’, in E minor, tells a story. But it is far from being descriptive music. The writing is of extraordinary richness and vivacity. The first chord is certainly one of the most pathos-laden moments in music since the first seven bars of Schumann’s Scenes from Faust. Smetana, a great admirer of Chopin, was inspired by folk music without ever copying it. The quartet is a discreet summary of his life in four movements. It represents youth, with its enthusiasms, its adventures and its hopes but with a premonition of tragic events. The second (Allegro a la polka) is freedom from care and the dance, the deep heart of Bohemia. The third movement is a song of love to his adored wife. And the final movement is all happiness, then, in a single chord, deafness strikes like an axe into a tree trunk.

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Smetana - String Quartet No.1 in E minor "From my life" - Allegro vivo appassionato

The Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57, is in five movements, which in fact conceal a very well balanced tripartite form: a scherzo comes between two pairs of linked movements, the first acting as a prelude and fugue, the second as an intermezzo and finale. The strictness of its form doubtless plays some part in the richness of this work, with its assumed neo-classicism, its skilfully constructed dramatic effects and its intense lyricism.
Dmitri Shostakovich gave numerous performances of this composition with the Beethoven Quartet, and it was the last work he performed publicly as a pianist in the 1960s.

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Shostakovich, Piano Quintet in G minor Op.57 - Scherzo

The stifling String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, op. 110 is very different of the Piano Quintet op.57. It was written in 1960, when the Shostakovich’s life was again clouded, and he had recently been through a serious inspirational crisis. In the ruins of Dresden, he attempted to complete his music for the film Five days - five nights. This new quartet was written in just three days, between 12 and 14 July. Shostakovich had this to say about it:
‘I composed my Quartet No. 8 with the idea that, if I happened to die, no one would think of writing a work to my memory. I therefore decided to write it myself. The cover could bear the words: “Dedicated to the author of this quartet”. The main theme of the quartet consists of the notes D. Es. C. H., that is to say, my initials [i.e. D. Sch, the German transliteration of his name] and I have quoted some of my own works - a short anthology!’
The work was first performed on 2 October 1960 by the Beethoven Quartet.

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Shostakovich, String Quartet No.8 in C minor Op.110 - Allegro molto

Creativity is not something that can be turned on and off like a tap . . . 
Art is a labour of love, a question of patience and concentration. To place demands on it, criteria, quotas, damages it, slowly kills it. Art, like nature, must be allowed to develop and to grow, in order to attain plenitude. Following this principle, La Dolce Volta prefers to privilege quality over quantity. Releases are limited to ten albums a year, but each of them is the fruit of in-depth work, and above all a special relationship between the soloist and the composer. The artists’ virtuosity is coupled with their ineffable and highly personal approach, a feeling that can only be expressed through music. 
And since jewels worthy of the name can only be offered in special cases, the albums La Dolce Volta releases are themselves works of art: each record cover is an original work of art; the digipack’s inner sleeve includes a booklet in four languages and an interview with the musician. A bandeau is wrapped around each album, on which is printed the name of the soloist, the name of the composer, and the work performed. 
For La Dolce Volta, music is not just a shrink-wrapped object for sale. Like all beautiful things in life, it must come to fruition naturally, the result of careful craftsmanship, and offered like an exquisite flower. 
For La Dolce Volta music is a question of elegance and beauty without concessions.