Smetana - String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Bedrich Smetana's String Quartet No. 2 in D Minor performed by the Travnicek Quartet.

2010 Japanese pressing Blu-spec CD. Nippon Columbia.

With the so-called Prague Defenestration in May 1618, now 400 years ago, a dispute which had been smoldering for years escalated harshly. This date marks the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, which was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in human history it resulted in eight million fatalities mainly from violence, famine and plagues, but also from military engagements predominantly fought on German soil since 1620, only brought to an end by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Arno Paduch, the leader of the Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble and a specialist of German Music from the early Baroque, has compiled a program with music written for various events which took place during this war period. It is music for political occasions, like a InchTe DeumInch dedicated to Emperor Ferdinand II for the celebration after the Battle at the White Mountain by Johann Sixt von Lerchenfels, Heinrich Schütz' composition InchDa pacem DomineInch, which was performed during the Electoral Diet in October 1627, or Andreas Düben's funerary motet InchBonum certamen certaviInch for the Swedish king Gustav Adolf, who was killed in the Battle of Lützen. But the programme also contains compositions that describe the horrors of war two good examples are Johann Hildebrand's simple but poignant monody InchAch Gott! Wir haben's nicht gewusst, was Krieg für eine PlageInch (Oh Lord, we didn't know what a real plague is war), which expressed the widespread despair at the hopelessness of the situation, or Matthias Weckmann's sacred concerto InchWie liegt die Stadt so wüsteInch (How doth the city sit solitary).