Grayson Hirst's fine performance of the Diary on Arabesque/Harmonia Mundi is let down rather by the impassivity of the mezzo-soprano taking the role of the alluring gipsy Zefka; and since it has no coupling it makes pretty short measure (39 minutes) for a CD. On both those counts Peter Keller's reading is to be preferred (his mezzo Clara Wirz, in particular, is capable of an insinuating intimacy of manner, and has a slight but seductive huskiness to her lower register). Keller himself, like Hirst, is a light-voiced tenor, convincingly young, ardent and poetic, and he makes even more of the words than Hirst does. He has excellent diction (his enunciation of that awkward Czech consonant r is especially convincing perhaps he is Czech? Accord say nothing at all about him) and an effectively used head voice. There is just a touch of strain in the last song (two high Cs after over half an hour's taxing and almost uninterrupted singing Really, Professor Janacek!) but so there is in Hirst's account of it. Keller's pianist is not quite so idiomatic as Hirst's excellent Antonin Kubalek, but he is eloquent and produces a commandingly big sound in the 'wordless love-song' of No. 13 in the cycle (Kubalek here is harder-edged: we are audibly closer to the world of the two string quartets). Both recordings have good and atmospherically placed female choruses; if I prefer that on the Accord version it is because the singers are not so magically remote that their words are lost.
As far as the Diary is concerned, then, Keller's performance can be recommended more warmly than Hirst's, despite the provision of song-texts in French only and the absence of cueing bands between songs.
The quartet should be regarded as a makeweight, not as a competitor with the two other versions listed above. It is an urgent and intense reading (if a hasty one at times) but at least as recorded here, closely and drily, the Dolezal Quartet have a wiry, nasal sound that is no match either for the Medici (Nimbus) or the Talich (Calliope/Harmonia Mundi). But Keller's Diary is well worth hearing, it was recorded in 1979 and I wish I'd heard it before now.'