»In 1912, when my second quartet was performed in Berlin, a tumult arose in the audience that was not far from a tussle. On the one side, shouts of amazement; on the other side, expressions of displeasure and boos. Even Schönberg, who attaches special value to flops, was envious of me because of this flop. What I want to say with this is that our generation too has fought for its ideals and had to wait long and often still is waiting to receive honest and full recognition of its efforts to produce a new musical language, which very often again became the basis for the new aspirations of the younger generation.« These words were not written by an anarchistic innovator but by Josef Suk, known as a euphonious late romanticist and Dvořák son-in-law. His second string quartet, however, is surely the most ambitious and »most modern« work penned by him. In the field of chamber music it also ranks as his most important work. For cpo the Minguet Quartet has now recorded Suk's complete oeuvre for string quartet – with Matthias Kirschnereit joining them for the early piano quintet. From this early quintet, which even found favor with the one-man Audio jury formed by the hypercritical Brahms, to the abovementioned second string quartet a cosmos of the most wonderful chamber music spreads out before us and now is finally congenially documented by a young generation of artists. Genuine listening pleasure!