String Quartet No. 2 (Haas)
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Pavel Haas composed his second string quartet, Op. 7, titled "From the Monkey Mountains" (Czech: "Z opičích hor"), in 1925, three years after he finished his composition studies in Leoš Janáček´s masterclass.
The title of the quartet is somewhat provocative: in Czech, the "Monkey Mountains" used to be the nickname of the Vysočina Region (Moravian Highlands), an area once popular with tourists. The work was premièred in Brno on 16 March 1926, by the Moravian Quartet. The first performance was not well received, however: in the last movement, Haas added a percussionist, in combination with other unusual musical elements, and this daring experiment was not appreciated by the audience. Haas subsequently removed the percussion, though several modern performances and recordings have reinstated it.[1]
