Even the best-informed Dvořák followers may not realise that his 1887 Cypresses, the collection of string quartet miniatures that often fill out discs of the composer’s better-known chamber works, had their origins as an early song-cycle written in 1865 when the 24-year-old composer was still finding his voice and mending a broken heart. This was Dvořák’s Dichterliebe and, considering that he didn’t go on to write song-cycles with the concentration of Schubert or Schumann, it represents a road not taken. The cycle’s dedicatee criticised the word-settings; the composer later agreed and ‘banked’ the 18 songs (to use a musical theatre term), reusing any number of them over the years in operas and, most significantly, in the 12 string quartet pieces that constitute Cypresses. Ostensibly, the string quartet versions are songs without words but, without the obvious polarity of the voice/piano medium, don’t really feel like songs at all. The later Cypresses are pieces without a genre, so no wonder the composer had problems getting them published. Now, Dvořák’s profile is such that the remaining six songs left out of the later Cypresses are heard here newly transcribed for string quartet by Hans-Peter Dott.

The beauty of this set is hearing the string quartets next to the original song-cycle, bits of which have turned up on mixed recital discs (including one by Lucia Popp on BBC Legends) but which is recorded complete here for the first time. Though lightweight, the cycle is definitely worth hearing: the Gustav Pfleger-Moravsky poems are sweet, sincere and about young-at-heart matters, treated with a certain amount of formal invention by the composer, particularly in the way he splinters a stanza to maintain an effective musical idea. Emotionally, the songs maintain a safe, tidy veneer, ranging from the mildly playful to the mildly tortured but rarely sounding formulaic except when Dvořák seems unsure how to conclude several of them. The best of them, a gem called ‘Oh, what a perfect golden dream’, completely lives up to its title, with a rapturous vocal line held airborne by a sturdy ostinato that could be mistaken for Janáček were it a bit more aggressive. Interestingly, this is one song that Dvořák didn’t include in the later Cypresses. Maybe he realised that it was beyond improvement.

The disc’s pianist, Andreas Frese, writes in the notes that songs and string quartets are closely aligned, saying that the composer ‘kept very close to the original models’. I disagree. Timings alone show that most of the string quartet versions are often twice as long as the original songs. The string quartets feel more harmonically succulent than the songs, whose more declamatory passages have their meaning effectively translated into the wordless medium in any number of inventive ways. The undercurrent of nostalgia that’s so characteristic of the mature Dvořák is heard only in the later Cypresses. Neither songs nor quartets are major works. But, put together, it’s fascinating to hear how the younger composer went as far as he could go at that time, followed up later on by the far richer resources of the mature Dvořák. That dialogue, of course, is missing from Dott’s transcriptions, which are sympathetically Dvořákian but seem to employ certain techniques (pizzicato obbligatos, for example) because that’s what the composer might have done – and thus feel like an act of second-hand creativity.

What keeps this set from being a mere academic exercise is the quality of the performances. Neither of the singers, Marcus Ullmann and Martin Bruns, is particularly charismatic but Ullmann is hugely listenable and both (combined with pianist Frese) have perfect instincts for what these relatively modest songs are and are not. Maybe it’s a testament to their sympathetic vocalism and use of the Czech text that the cycle’s supposed declamation problems aren’t in evidence. The Bennewitz Quartet is downright wonderful, with a perfect balance of warmth and objective clarity, using expressive rubatos so effectively that the group seems to love the music 100 per cent. But with both discs adding up to roughly 81 minutes, it’s a pity all of the music couldn’t have been squeezed on to a single disc, if only to facilitate easier song-to-quartet comparisons.