#69: Breaking notated slurs
Section 7: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.51, ii: Dumka
First violinist Karel Hoffmann frequently breaks notated slurs in the passage b.49-57, as in many others. It is impossible to tell if this is a relevant convention — in the sense that the meaning of such slurs was broadly different, and more fluid than later in the twentieth century — or if he just ran out of bow in the moment of performance, and preferred to prioritise the sound’s continuity by taking another.
It seems probable that a combination of both is in play. But when they did play the slurs, we felt that the Czech Quartet committed to those legato connections remarkably ‘actively’, again emphasising intervals — at least when a feeling of resistance was implied by the material.
