The all-Polish Royal String Quartet are one of the most interesting and dynamically developing string quartets of the
young generation. They are particularly acclaimed for their performances of music from their homeland, and have
received the Special Prize of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage ‘in recognition of their contribution
to Polish culture’. Continuing this theme, their debut recording for Hyperion features music by Szymanowski and
Róz.ycki.
The two Szymanowski quartets are contrasting masterpieces from different periods in the composer’s varied career.
The first seems reminiscent of Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No 1 in its impressionistic sound world, its voluptuous,
erotic sensibility and its layers of texture and colour. The second quartet is from the composer’s last phase, and draws
on the full range of folk materials he had encountered in the Tatra highlands, and which inspired him to a new and
more ‘authentic’ modernism. It is a piece of granitic strength and ruggedness.
We complete the disc with a contemporary rarity, the String Quartet by Róz.ycki, a work which shows the virtues
of a late-Romantic idiom untouched by French or Russian style, and touched only lightly by central European folk
influences.