Sunday Classics preview: String-quartet encores, Part 2 -- We hear from the Russians

The "middle period" Borodin Quartet (Mihail Kopelman and Andrei Abramenkov, violins; Dmitri Shebalin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello) plays the Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky's First String Quartet.

by Ken

Last night in Part 1 we heard an international assortment of encore-type string-quartet pieces. Tonight it's all Russian.

As I mentioned, the original impetus for this series of posts was the inclusion as bonus pieces of two of these encore-type pieces on Marquis-label CDs by the St. Petersburg Quartet. Last night we heard the string-quartet arrangement of Debussy's "Golliwog's Cake-walk," and in tonight's all-Russian program we're going to hear that performance of the Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky's First String Quartet.


COMING UP: THE MOST LISTENER-COMPULSIVE
STRING-QUARTET ENCORE OF THEM ALL

Among the other Russian pieces we're going to hear is one it would be an understatement to say I'm crazy about -- it makes me crazy. I've been known to listen to it 10, 20, maybe 30 times in a row. By way of preview, in this clip Shostakovich's string-quartet arrangement of his Polka from The Age of Gold gets some special treatment from violinists Marc Yun and Diana Zhou, violist Chris Cho, and cellist Stephen Cho at the chamber orchestra Camerata Notturna's Chamber Music Extravaganza in Lincoln Center's Rose Studio, Aug. 16, 2009.



FOR TONIGHT'S FULL PROGRAM OF RUSSIAN
STRING-QUARTET ENCORE PIECES, CLICK HERE.

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