Concerto for String Quartet

Fran Lhotka composed his Concerto for String Quartet in 1924, and it was first performed by the Czech Zika Quartet on November 20, 1925. Krešimir Kovačević affirmed that “Lhotka created a work full of freshness and vitality, one that at that time, in terms of concept and manner of treatment, constituted a great novelty in our string quartet literature.” He was primarily thinking of the form of the composition, which, although written for string quartet, is because of its original, uncommon and rhapsodic formal structure entirely different from the form of the string quartet then common and as mostly practised. The composition captured the attention of audience and reviewers with its musical facture as well, primarily with the dissonance of its harmonic arrangements and layout, the density and dramaturgy of the thematic material as compared with the accompaniment. In the Concerto for String Quartet, Lhotka foregrounded the virtuoso playing of the musicians and employed various performance techniques and instrumental effects, which in itself tells of his thorough and well-informed knowledge of each of the instruments of the string quartet, a familiarity with the secrets of arranging their sounds in harmonious and opulent simultaneity. The work is also a case study in the employment of vernacular music as raw material, as building blocks that the composer with his complex creative procedure has transformed into his own, original and distinctive, idiom, far removed from folk quotation or simple arrangement. This work, effective and very attractive, if demanding in the interpretation, is a challenge to any string quartet consisting of superlative artists; it is however a rewarding composition for any concert programme, bound to be very well received by audiences. Issuing the Concerto for String Quartet, the Music Information Centre of the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall is celebrating the 140th anniversary of the birth of Fran Lhotka, composer who enriched Croatian music of the first half of the 20th century with an oeuvre of great artistic value.