Having greatly admired the playing and recording of the Bennewitz String Quartet playing Haydn quartets, I decided to invest in the quartet playing Dvorak (10th and 13th string quartets). As a great fan of string quartets, I could not understand why, in my giant collection of recordings, I had only one CD of Dvorak string quartets (recorded in 1984 by the Panocha Quartet). Antonin Dvorak wrote a lot of music, including numerous string quartets, sonatas, trios, symphonies -- and concertos for violin, piano, and cello (of which the cello concerto became famous). His Slavonic Dances are ubiquitous. To my taste, much of his reams of music speaks of a superb musical craftsman, rather than of someone inspired.
Like later Beethoven and Shostakovitch, Dvorak appears at times to have regarded his string quartets as a personal musical sandbox; many passages and harmonies of the 13th quartet, for example, lean more towards the harmonic language of the 20th century, rather than the 19th. The quartet was composed in 1896 -- just on the cusp. The sandbox was not for those who wanted "easy listening". The 10th quartet contains more memorable material; for me, the 13th quartet has its material spread thinly, with a little going a long way.
The Bennewitz Quartet does not disappoint. The quartet's dynamics are again excellent (as in its Haydn CD) and the recording of the Dvorak (SWR Music in Baden-Baden) faithfully reproduces the sound of the four players, though the recording perspective is not up to the high standard of the Czechs when they recorded the Haydn. I hope that the Bennewitz will record more Haydn, plus Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Shostakovitch. I am waiting, chequebook ready. It appears I am a big fan of the Bennewitz Quartet, but not of much of Dvorak's music. Now I have two CDs of Dvorak string quartets on my shelves: that is enough.
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