The Kreutzer Sonata

I do love it when great literature and classical music meet:

In Tolstoy’s 1889 novella, a woman who is trapped in a loveless marriage plays Beethoven’s sonata with a dashing violinist, and seems carried away by the music’s passion. Her husband, plagued by jealous fantasies, cuts short a business trip and comes home unexpectedly, well after midnight. He finds her together with the violinist in the dining room, fully clothed but involved in an intimate conversation. Convinced she has betrayed him, he kills her in a fit of jealous rage. Since Tolstoy narrates this tale through the husband’s obsessive and bitter point of view, we never know for sure what has happened between the unnamed wife and her sonata partner.

Janacek was attracted by the novella’s dramatic urgency and emotional extremes, and he succeeded in rendering its narrative arc in a compelling series of musical events. The composer was a pan-Slavist who looked to the east rather than to ­Austro-German models for inspiration. In his string quartets, it is not easy to find traditional structures like the sonata form, variations or rondo – continual development might be an apt way to characterise his compositional procedure. The music seems to be in a state of turbulent flux . . .

Indeed, Janacek’s string quartets are wonderful. They sound far more modern than they should, which is a good thing in my book.

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