“If you haven't yet heard the Pavel Haas Quartet, buckle your seat belt,” wrote NPR after the quartet’s last appearance at Carnegie Hall. The most celebrated Czech string quartet of our time, which has been called “the world’s most exciting string quartet” by London’s The Times, now returns during the 2024 Year of Czech Music celebration. The ensemble performs an all-Czech program that opens with Josef Suk’s gorgeous Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn, “St. Wenceslas.” In honor of the bicentennial of Bedřich Smetana—the quintessential Czech composer who inspired the first Year of Czech Music in 1924—the quartet performs his autobiographical String Quartet No. 1, “From My Life.” The program closes with the gripping passion and longing of Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters.”