Sunday Classics preview: Remembering an impromptu encore performance of the Shostakovich 4th String Quartet

After its aborted earlier attempt at a recording of the 15 Shostakovich string quartets for Sony, the St. Petersburg Quartet began its eventually completed traversal for Hyperion -- one of the great projects in recording history -- in 1999 with this coupling of the Quartets Nos. 4, 6, and 8.

by Ken

We began last night's Shostakovich string quartet preview with the final two and a half minutes of the Fourth Quartet as played by the Emerson Quartet, and I should perhaps have made explicit that this wasn't intended as an endorsement. It so happened that in preparation for these pieces I had just listened to the Emerson's performance of the Fourth Quartet, and while it's certainly not bad, it's like most contemporary quartets' encounters with the Shostakovich 15 -- you get the feeling that the performers are trying each of these pieces on for size, making something of the parts that happen to fit them and muddling through the rest. It happened, though, that those final minutes of the Fourth Quartet fit the Emerson very nicely indeed, and so when I decided to extract just the conclusion of the piece, it seemed natural to go with what I would account a lovely performance . . . of those few minutes. (In a moment we're going to hear another performance of just this bit which I think demonstrates how much is missing even from this "good" bit of Emersonia.)

The ensemble we heard play the whole of the Fourth Quartet was one of the 20th century's supreme string quartets, and for a lot of decades in my view the uncontestedly supreme interpreters of the Shostakovich, the original Borodin Quartet, which is to say from its founding at the Moscow Conservatory in the late 1940 up to the emigration to the U.S. of first violinist Rostislav Dubinsky (and the apparently simultaneous retirement due to ill health of his virtual nemesis in the quartet, second violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov) in 1975. The nearest approach to the Borodin's achievement with the 13 Shostakovich quartets it was able to record before Dubinsky's departure was the Shostakovich Quartet's 1978-88 traversal, at least until the St. Petersburg's in 1999-2003. The performances are very different from the original Borodin's but have in common with that great antecedent the ability to encompass the staggering array of kinds of music that occur in "the 15" and to make them all its own.

As I mentioned last night, we're currently at the midpoint of a unique musical event in New York: a performance of all 15 Shostakovich quartets, with a middle or late Beethoven quartet included on each of the six programs, at Bargemusic, at Brooklyn's Fulton Ferry Landing. Still to come next weekend, February 18-20, are Shostakovich's Nos. 6, 8, and 13 plus Beethoven's Op. 95 on Friday night; Shostakovich's Nos. 10 and 14 plus Beethoven's Op. 127 on Saturday night; and Shostakovich's Nos. 11, 12, and 15 plus Beethoven's Grosse Fuge on Sunday afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll offer some quick images of two of these works, Nos. 6 and 14. For tonight we continue remembering that remarkable night in 1956 when the original Borodin Quartet, assigned to perform at a "Russian music" festival in Modavia, gave two performances of the then-banned-in-Russia No. 4.

Last night I shared Rostislav Dubinsky's recollection of the official performance, including his description of the response of the composer, seated in the front row, to hearing this music, which had been written in 1949 in the wake of his second denunciation by the Stalin regime, in 1948. The piece had had to wait till December 1953, eight months after Stalin's death, for its public premiere, and afterward remained on the government's "forbidden" list.

I can't resist offering once again the haunting final minutes of the Fourth Quartet, this time as performed by the St. Petersburg Quartet -- at least as beautiful as the Emerson's, but with a great many other things happening as well -- along with Dubinsky's description of the conclusion of the "official" performance in Moldavia.

The final pianissimo, like a last sigh, flew off into the hall and returned to us a barely audible echo. We tried to prolong the silence, but the audience interfered. Destroying the fragile world of brief truth, uncertain applause broke out in the hall. We rose slowly, bowed to Shostakovich, and left the stage. The applause died without gaining strength.

After the concert the Borodin Quartet members received thanks for the music from composer Nikolai Peyko, who informed them that "Dmitri Dmitreivich [i.e., Shostakovich] was very moved by your playing," and asked if they might dine together. Naturally they asked if Shostakovich might join them. But Shostakovich had already been invited to a sort of cultural "state dinner" with much of the Moscow contingent, including the minister Schepalin.

FOR MORE ON THAT DINNER IN MOLDAVIA, AND AN
IMPROMPTU ENCORE OF THE 4TH QUARTET, CLICK HERE.

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