Bedrich Smetana was the first major nationalist composer of Bohemia. Probably best known for his opera The bartered bride and of course The Moldau (from ‘My homeland’) most of his orchestral music is rather neglected by the average symphony orchestra.

In the last years of his life, Franck created three chamber music masterpieces: the Violin Sonata, the Piano Quintet, and this String Quartet. Only the Violin Sonata has achieved a full measure of popularity, and this string quartet is virtually unknown, largely because of its ambitious length and difficulty in performance. It's a terrific piece of music employing the composer's trademark cyclical form: the movements share tunes, and the finale acts as a sort of summing up of the entire work. While challenging to the performers, there's nothing difficult about it for the listener, and this performance is just about the only show in town. Fortunately, it's a very good one. –David Hurwitz

Filling a gap in the nineteenth century piano repertoire that many listeners would not have suspected was there, this excellent 2006 disc by English pianist Kathryn Stott of piano music by Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana admirably serves its purpose. Opening with the half-hour-long, six-movement cycle Dreams and closing with several piquant Czech Dances, the program shows Smetana to have been a composer not only of ethnic creations but of virtuoso piano music in the Liszt mold as well. While there have been other excellent recordings of these works before, they have always been by Czech pianists who seemed to have instinctively grasped the specific rhythmic accent of Smetana's music, and this recording proves that you don't have to be Czech to play Smetana. Stott clearly has the big technique to tackle the extreme difficulties of the Concert Étude in C major and the more extravagantly virtuosic movements of Dreams, but she also has the sensitivity to handle the sweetness of "On the Sea Shore – a memory" and "Faded Happiness" (from Dreams) and the rhythmic verve to dance through the Fantasia on Czech Folksongs and the Czech Dances.