Růžičková
My main musical discovery this summer has been a recording released in 1972 of Zuzana Růžičková (1927-2017) and Josef Suk (1929-2011) playing Bach’s sonatas for harpsichord and violin. Suk and Růžičková introduce the listener into a wholly new, often surprising sonorous universe. Their interpretation is marked by intelligence, rigour, and (to use that unfashionable word) virility. Quiet passages resound with an almost unbearable tenderness free of appeal to superficial sentiment. The two communicate this music as an essential statement. They play Bach as if their lives depended on it.
When you read up a little about Růžičková, you find that hers literally did, in extreme circumstances. Her existence was deeply marked by Europe’s twentieth-century traumas, yet she seems to have been without bitterness. I recommend Peter Getzels’ cinematic portrait of this remarkable musician, available here – or on Medici.
