Sunday Classics: Sampling the world of Shostakovich's string quartets with Nos. 6 and 14

The American Quartet plays the opening movement of Shostakovich's Third Quartet.

by Ken

As I've been mentioning in Friday night's and last night's previews, next weekend the St. Petersburg Quartet, possibly the finest string quartet in the game today, complete's a six-concert series at Brooklyn's Bargemusic with the final three concerts of a series called "Celebrating the Complete Shostakovich and Late Beethoven String Quartets," which will encompass all 15 Shostakovich quartets with a Beethoven quartet included in each program (in the case of the first three programs, which took place last month, the three quartets of Beethoven's Op. 59, the Rasumovsky quartets).

The link is far from far-fetched. Both individually and as a body of work, the Shostakovich quartets do inevitably recall the only comparable body of music. And there's excellent precedent for the link generally. Before conductor Kurt Masur assumed the music directorship of the New York Philharmonic, with his longtime orchestra the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra he put together a Beethoven-Shostakovich festival for which carefully chosen orchestral works were paired (Shostakovich himself was approached for his approval, and was enthusiastic to the point of wanting to participate in the works pairings) for audiences that were initially grudging but became increasingly enthusiastic. The concerts began selling out, and the whole series had to be repeated. This was one of the many things Masur had hoped to do in New York but was told by management, "You can't do that here." The most he was allowed to do was one such program a season, which defeated the whole purpose, both artistically and commercially.

We've focused so far on Shostakovich's Fourth Quartet, a pivotal work in that it was written in the wake of his second denunciation by the Stalin regime, in 1948. One obvious effect was to leave a man of an already nervous disposition convinced, understandably, that he was a door knock away from death. Another relatively obvious effect was that he began composing almost entirely for himself, knowing how poor performance prospects were for the foreseeable future. Perhaps less obvious was a new emphasis on chamber music. He had come relatively late to the string quartet, not composing his first until 1938, when he turned 32, and the Second and Third Quartets didn't follow until 1944 and 1946. Now it seemed the perfect repository for the artistic matter of most personal importance to him, and it would remain that way until his death in 1975.

Even when he resumed composing actively in more public forms, Shostakovich maintained a careful control of the kind of content that went into them. This has led many commentators to claim that publicly he became a stooge of the Soviet regime, but this is because those commentators are morons -- either unequipped with ears or brains or for some reason not using them. Obvious examples: the "patriotic" symphonies, Nos. 11 and 12, which provide musical representations of the revolutions that preceded "the" Russian Revolution, in 1905 and 1911. "Irony" would be the wrong word, but clearly -- if you're listening carefully, more carefully than the composer expected the cultural bureaucracy would be listening -- among the subjects they consider is what sorts of popular attitudes and responses were built into those experiences.

But in the quartet, Shostakovich was limited only by his imagination. By 1956, the year of those Moldavian performances we celebrated of the then-still-banned Fourth Quartet (meanwhile he had composed a Fifth), the regime had relaxed somewhat, and in this partial thaw he composed an almost-sunny work, the Sixth Quartet, which is the first we're going to be hearing today. After that the political situation periodically worsened and improved, and the composer's own health deteriorated sharply, increasing the generally dark outlook of the quartets. Our other quartet today, the 14th (1972-73) is at once a dark and brooding but luminously beautiful piece.

THE ST. PETERSBURG QUARTET AT BARGEMUSIC
Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn

Friday, February 18 • 8 pm
SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartets: No. 6, Op. 101; No. 8, Op. 110; No. 13, Op. 138
BEETHOVEN: Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95

Saturday, February 19 • 8 pm
SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartets: No. 10, Op. 118; No. 14, Op. 142
BEETHOVEN: Quartet No. 12 in E-flat, Op. 127

Sunday, February 20 • 3 pm
SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartets: No. 11, Op. 122; No. 12, Op. 133; No. 15, Op.144
BEETHOVEN: Grosse Fuge, Op. 133

Note: Listings are of the works included on each program, not the order of performance. Ms. Aranovskaya will tell us about that at the start of each concert.

St. Petersburg Quartet: Alla Aranovskaya and Evgeny Zvonnikov, violins; Boris Vayner, viola; Leonid Shukaev, cello
[Note: First violinist Aranovskaya and cellist Shukaev have been with the quartet since its founding in 1985. The "middle positions" have turned over several times. Violist Vayner joined the quartet in 2005, second violinist Zvonnikov in 2010.]

each concert: $35 ($30 senior, $15 student)

FOR OUR SAMPLING OF THE SHOSTAKOVICH
QUARTETS NOS. 6 AND 14, CLICK HERE.

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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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Sunday Classics: From the Borodin Quartet to the Borodin Trio

You don't need an atlas to know that the music is Russian, and the musicians too. The Borodin Trio -- violinist Rostislav Dubinsky, cellist Yuli Turovsky, and pianist Luba Edlina -- plays the first half of the first movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque in D minor, written in memory of Tchaikovsky. (The second half of the movement is here. The rest of the trio is also posted. By the way, if you're wondering about the geishas used for illustration, a commenter has already raised the question. I can't even propose a theory.)

by Ken

I had just about finished a post built more or less around the wry story of How the Borodin Quartet Got Its Name, designed to be a pleasant stroll down memory lane joining the Borodin Quartet clip below to the Borodin Trio clip above. As usually happens, the thing kept growing, until finally I pulled the plug. Every word of it was riveting to me, but I decided that nobody was going to care about who succeeded whom in the second-violin chair, or even how it was that the "Soviet" violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov came to replace the talented, idealistic Vladimir Rabei. So I just chopped it all out and dumped it in a file for deposit in my personal time capsule.

I've mentioned already, writing earlier this week about the group of string players from the Moscow Conservatory who eventually became the Borodin String Quartet, that Rostislav Dubinsky, the founding first violinist, seems to me one of the great musicians of the 20th century. Dubinsky remained with the quartet for nearly 30 years, until he and his wife, the excellent pianist Luba Edlina (a frequent musical collaborator with the quartet), finally unable to endure any more of the grueling rigor of officially sanctioned Soviet anti-Semitism, emigrated to the West, in 1975, settling in Bloomington, Indiana, at Indiana University's School of Music, then enlisting fellow émigré Yuli Turovsky, a cellist who had settled in Montreal, to form another world-class ensemble, the Borodin Piano Trio.

Here, in condensed form, based on the account in Dubinsky's 1989 memoir Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker's State is a lesson in the politics of Soviet culture, the story of --

HOW THE BORODIN QUARTET GOT ITS NAME

In 1954, this quartet, which had been playing together since 1946, when the members were still conservatory students, but still didn't have a name,. In fact, it had only half of its original personnnel: Dubinsky and the half-Jewish cellist Valentin Berlinksy. On the advice of worldly wise advisers, who advised them that a predominantly Jewish quartet had absolutely zero prospects with a Soviet culture ministry obsessed with promoting "Soviet" culture, the remaining members replace first the departing Jewish second violinist Rabei and then the violist Rudolf Barshai with "Soviet" artists, Yaroslav Alexandrov and Dmitri Shebalin, respectively.

Even so, they still had no prospect of the official support they would need for decent domestic domestic bookings and, even more important, for the possibility of foreign tours, the only way they could earn enough to support themselves as a string quartet. They couldn't even get approval for a name, which required all but impossible-to-obtain government clearance.

I remembered that it was from the venerable and politically well-connected Beethoven Quartet that the quartet got the crucial advice as to how to wangle a name for themselves, but until I replaced my missing copy of the Dubinsky book this week, I had forgotten the circumstances under which that advice was given, which turn out to be less altruistic than one might assume. (I had forgotten as well that it was Shirinsky who first suggested the name "Borodin" to them.)

Dubinsky, as he tells the story of the Borodin Quartet, was habitually reluctant to perform the obeisances to the Soviet regime that everyone in the know kept assuring him were obligatory in establishing a career, stuff like attending Communist Party functions (both Alexandrov and Berlinsky were Party members) and kissing up to Party cultural commissars and musical favorites like the Beethoven Quartet members (who by the way were not Party members; however, their lineage, which went back to the immediate post-Russian Revolution period, seems to have been accepted as a pretty good substitute).

For once, though, Dubinsky acted "sensibly," going along when Berlinsky correctly interpreted a broad hint from Vasily Shirinsky, the Beethoven's second violinist, and offered to play the string quartet Shirinsky mentioned to them that he had just written -- which "by some strange coincidence" he happened to have right there in his briefcase! When the quartet played the piece at the Composers' Union, and Berlinsky stepped up the ass-kissing by offering fulsome praise for the piece in the discussion that followed, the grateful Shirinsky invited them to a celebration at his apartment, where they were treated like the patriarch's dearest comrades.

Dubinsky recalled that the quartet's enthusiastic new patron, Shirinsky, congratulated them on having succeeded as far as they had, and told them that it was time now to take the crucial step of getting an official name -- and, he stressed, a good one. Berlinsky responded:

"But how can we get one? The road to the ministry is closed to us."

"I'll teach you how. In the spring there will be a widely celebrated Glinka jubilee. Ask Khrennikov [Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007), the powerful secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, who rose in the '60s to membership on the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party] to write a letter to the minister, and we'll ask Shostakovich to sign it. He won't refuse, and after him everyone will sign. It will be difficult for Anisimov to ignore that, especially now, after giving Tchaikovsky's name to another quartet right now."

"The Glinka Quartet?"

"Well, I don't think they will give you the name of Glinka, but any other name will do."

"Glinka is a good name," Berlinsky said dreamily.

"What's wrong, for example, with Borodin? Two beautiful quartets."

"Then let's ask for it right away," I said.

"No, no, my dear fellow, that's not the way things are done. They usually don't give what is requested."

"And how did you get the name of Beethoven? Did you ask for Bach or for God Himself?"

"We never asked anyone for anything. We just named ourselves the Beethoven Quartet from the very first concert. That was back in the twenties, right after the Revolution. The spirit of freedom, so to speak, was still flying over our heads. We couldn't think of a better name than Beethoven."

"And why is it so complicated to get a name now?"

He smiled again. "The Soviet regime is a peculiar thing," he said, squinting his eyes. "Some more vodka?"

"Definitely," Berlinsky said. "I have a toast." He waited while Shirinsky poured some for everyone and then raised his glass.

"Dear Vasily Petrovich, I would like to drink to you, to your health, and through you to the Beethoven Quartet, which we value very much and from which we are always learning."

Shirinksy smiled and replied. "Thank you, thank you, dear friends."

We drank and got up from the table. Shirinksy saw us to the door.


We did everything the way Shirinsky wanted us to. We made an appointment to see Khrennikov and laid before him the whole idea about receiving the name of Glinka in connection with the forthcoming jubilee. Khrennikov seemed relieved that we asked for nothing more and promised to support us with an appropriate letter.

It took him, however, half a year to compose his letter, and when we finally got it, the Glinka jubilee had already been announced. We brought the letter to Shirinsky, who showed it to Shostakovich and got his signature. After this, we could gather as many signatures as we wanted. We sent the letter to Anisimov, the Minister of Culture, and in another month he invited us to see him.

He was kindness itself. He said that he had personally watched our quartet develop, especially appreciated out assistance to young Soviet composers, agreed that our quartet needed a name, that the time for that had arrived, but . . . We had been waiting for this "but."

"But," he said, "Glinka is the father of all Russian music and his name is too great to limit it, so to speak, to the scale of chamber music alone. We are willing to give you a name. There are good names in the Russian musical heritage. Consider them, choose one, we have no objection," he concluded generously.

"What about the name of Borodin?" Berlinsky asked.

"I don't object."

Berlinsky looked at us and we all nodded.

"We agree," he said, as if he had just accepted a life sentence for our quartet.

"Splendid. Write an application and leave it with the secretary. I will sign it."

The story continues with the quartet members, in their delight at the outcome, joking about the minister's carefully administered slap in the faces of not just the young musicians but all the notables who had signed the letter urging acceptance of the name "Glinka." One of them jokes, "He probably thinks that by not giving us Glinka's name he saved the whole state from danger."

In their excitement they realize they need to inform their new patron Shirinsky of the day's events, and call on him at his studio at the conservatory, where he welcomes them and asks the students he was working with to leave. Berlinsky recounts the meeting with minister Anisimov, concluding, "Somehow I thought they would give us Glinka's name."

Shirinsky, squinting, says, "If you had gotten Glinka's name right now, together with the jubilee, I would've thought that I hadn't learned anything in sixty years. Well, my friends, congratulations! You got a good name and I hope it will be a successful one."

Berlinsky expresses the group's gratitude, but Shirinsky hasn't finished with his agenda. As he sees them to the door, he informs them that their performances of his string quartet at the Composers' Union have led to an offer of publication, and says, "You won't refuse to play it once again at the publisher's?"

Of course the soon-to-be Borodin Quartet wouldn't refuse!

"I thank you, and again, congratulations. We worked it out very cleverly."

Dubinsky notes in conclusion: "As we were leaving, we could hear him laughing to himself."

THE BORODIN QUARTET PLAYS SHOSTAKOVICH'S THIRD

Shostakovich's Third Quartet, completed in 1946, begins with one of the composer's most buoyant, spirited movements (here is a decent performance) but by this Adagio, the fourth of the work's five movements, has descended to the depths of introspection if not actual despair (that's an interpretive choice, I think), which means it's just the kind of music that the Dubinsky-led Borodin Quartet could really sink its teeth into. This was one of the works that fell afoul of the Soviet regime's postwar crusade against "non-Soviet" music, which could mean music that was written in a minor key, or sounded pessimistic, or merely ended softly, and in 1948, for the second time in his life, the composer found himself staring down the barrel of a full-fledged Stalinist assault.

Although the honor of the first performances of the Shostakovich string quartets continued to be granted by the composer to his old comrades of the Beethoven Quartet (our friend Balakirev added some interesting information about this in a comment on my piece earlier this week), the Borodin Quartet played each as it became available and was eventually allowed to record the earlier ones and then the newer ones as well. When the total reached 11, Angel issued the Borodin recordings in this country as a pair of three-LP sets on the budget Seraphim label, with condensed but still useful liner notes. If you can find a good early pressing (i.e., with the orange-and-brown labels) of these sets, they're still among the most satisfying string-quartet recordings ever made.

By the time EMI got around to a British release, Shostakovich had completed and the Dubinsky-led Borodin had recorded the 12th and a 13th Quartets. (Most unexpectedly, the British EMI LPs don't sound as lustrous as good pressings of the American Seraphim one.) But then the Dubinskys left the Soviet Union. I always thought Dubinsky would form some sort of quartet to perform and record the Shostakovich 14th and 15th Quartets, but that never happened.

Meanwhile, although competing recordings piled up, there was nothing remotely in the class of the Dubinsky-led Borodin recordings -- emphatically including the complete cycle recorded by the revamped Borodin Quartet, with violinists Mikhail Kopelman and Andrei Abramenkov joining holdover violist Shebalin and cellist Berlinsky. I don't doubt that Kopelman and Abramenkov were capable fiddlers, but almost all the quartet playing of theirs I've heard is tonally and musically drab; shockingly, so is the playing of Shebalin and Berlinsky, who left behind a legacy of quartet viola and cello playing as beautiful and vibrant as any I've heard.

Shebalin would subsequently retire, but Berlinsky remained in place and seemed reborn when Ruben Aharonian joined the Borodin as first violinist in 1996. Aharonian, Abramenkov, violist Igor Naidin, and Berlinsky were responsible for the landmark recording project I described here in July 2006 as "a cycle of the Beethoven string quartets that won't relax its grip."


QUICK HITS: BORODIN TRIO, BORODIN QUARTET

The Borodin Trio's Chandos recording of Rachmaninoff's two Trios élégiaques is still available.There's also an Amazon listing, accepting preorders, for a modestly priced November reissue by Brilliant Classics of the Borodin's Chandos Beethoven piano trios, unavailable for some time now.

The Dubinsky-led Borodin Quartet's recordings of the first 13 Shostakovich quartets have been reissued in Chandos's historical series,but the CD transfers, while OK, seem to me unworthy of one of the all-time great series of quartet recordings, less rich tonally than the Seraphim LPs, with almost a glaring sound. These remain great performances, though.

For me the Shostakovich quartet discography has finally been expanded and reshaped with the arrival of altogether splendid cycles recorded by two Russian quartets: a more traditional but really intensely executed one by the Shostakovich Quartet(about which I'm afraid I know very little), and the freshly imagined, boldly played and recorded Hyperion cycle by the St. Petersburg Quartet.


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The updated list is here.

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In which we find out how that Beethoven concerto movement ends, and recall a story about David Oistrakh

Yes, that night at the Royal Albert Hall David Oistrakh and Sir Adrian Boult really did get through the first movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. (You can access the clip of the first half of the movement here.)

by Ken

In this week's Sunday Classics I offered a clip of the first half of the first movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto as performed by the great Soviet violinist David Oistrakh with Sir Adrian Boult conducting, in London in 1968 -- the year Oistrakh turned 60. I hadn't intended this as a cliffhanger, but I was pleased to hear some expression of interest in the clip. It's a genuinely lovely performance of one of Beethoven's loveliest creations. The second half of the movement is posted above.

Oistrakh was, obviously, one of the great violinists of the 20th century. It's hard to point to any aspect of the violinist's art in which he reigned supreme among his peers. At the same time, there was no aspect in which he was in less than the top group, and he may have been the complete package -- a comfortable blend of technical and interpretive excellences.

And as I think can be heard in his sweet, supple phrasing in the Beethoven concerto, he had a good soul. Which set me to remembering a story told by another Soviet-born violinist, and another of the 20th century's finest musicians, Rostislav Dubinsky, the founding first violinist of the string quartet formed in 1946 by four students at the Moscow Conservatory, which eventually, many years and two personnel changes letter. Despite a great deal of internal turmoil, the Borodin Quartet remained one of the great string quartets the world has known until Dubinsky and his wife, the outstanding pianist Luba Edlina, emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976. (Dubinsky and Edlina settled rather comfortably at Indiana Universty School of Music in Bloomington. With a fellow émigré based in Montreal, cellist Yuri Tulovsky, formed the Borodin Trio, which also ranks among the finest chamber ensembles of which we have recorded evidence. You may have noticed how frequently I recommend recordings of theirs.)

It's impossible to appreciate the lives of Soviet artists without some understanding of the conditions under which they were controlled by the Soviet regime. In 1989 Dubinsky published a remarkable book called Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker's State. It's a book so filled with invaluable information, not to mention remarkable stories, that I'm appalled to find that it has been out of print for eons. Worse still, at the time of my last move eight years ago, my copy disappeared and since then I've been forced to repeat some of those stories from memory. Now I've found a reasonably priced replacement copy, so I can give you this story about Oistrakh as Dubinsky told it in the book.

While still a student at the Moscow Conservatory, Dubinsky in 1946 formed a string quartet with three fellow students. Upon graduation they faced the arduous ordeal, as a quartet made up of three Jews and a half-jew (the cellist Valentin Berlinsky), of establishing themselves in the climate of virulent anti-Semitism of the postwar Soviet Union. In 1950, Dubinsky writes, the quartet concentrated on preparation for the auditions for an international quartet competition in Prague.

Four quartets were entered in the competition, from which the top two finishers would go to Prague. There was an all-female quartet, which Dubinsky and his mates knew had to be taken seriously because of the patronage of the members of the celebrated Beethoven Quartet, who -- although they were not Communist Party members -- had strong ties to the government cultural apparatus, which ruled all aspects of Soviet culture, including the careers and lives of Soviet artists. Then there was a quartet from Leningrad which faced the same handicap of being made up of four Jews, and another from Georgia, which although an unknown quantity wasn't thought to be serious competition. The 20-member jury, made up of musical figures from Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union, including several Moscow Conservatory professors known to the quartet and the members of the Beethoven Quartet, would be controlled by the chairman, "the cultural tsar Anisimov."

On the day of the competition, there were curious no-shows among both the jurors and the competitors. "The Georgians, we were told, would not be coming to Moscow." And one of the conservatory professors scheduled to be on the jury, none other than Oistrakh, was reported sick.

Dubinsky's quartet played first, then had to remain while the other two participating quartets played. Dubinsky, in a state of high nervousness, returned to the auditorium in time to hear the last of them, the women's quartet. He provides a vivid description:

Their manner of playing was familiar, even though I was hearing them for the first time. It was (as we called it) a "coarse-ground" style. It came into fashion in Moscow after the war, when traditional playing was branded "non-Slavic" (read "Jewish"). This new style neglected everything that is so attractive in quartet playing: flexible ensemble, refined phasing, variety of colors. In their place was something else, insolent and smug. You wanted to cover your ears.

(This description, by the way, covers all the recordings I've heard by the lionized Beethoven Quartet.)

Once the playing was concluded, the players remained while the jury deliberated upstairs. In time, two of their professors came down. "It's all right. You are the best," one whispered to Dubinsky and Berlinsky. The other was equally reassuring.

Then the quartet's violist, Rudolf Barshai (by the time the quartet officially became the Borodin Quartet he would have been lured away, but went on to become one of the world's best-known solo violists and then an admired conductor), brought news. The professors had spoken to them during what turned out to have been a break called by the jury chairman Anisimov.

That's when Aslamazyan and Gusikov came down and congratulated us. But Anisimov and the Beethovens remained upstairs for a consultation. When everyone got together again, Anisimov made a speech. About how the Ministry of Culture and the conservatory serve Soviet art, that their aims are mutual, that in the future there will be other competitions and, therefore, a mutual understanding is required . . . on and on, the same old stuff. In short, he suggested a new vote. Everyone got the message: now the girls get first place and we're second.

Barshai also reports that Professors Aslamazyan and Gusikov disagreed, "but the Beethovens did their job." It's all puzzling, but seemingly trivial in the long run. After all two quartets are going to Prague, and they have finished in the top two.

However, in the morning Barshai shows up at Dubinsky's home with news that explains the curious second vote that reversed the order of finish. "Anisimov called the jury together again, but this time he spoke about the friendship between all our nationalities." Going instead of their quartet would be the Georgians, who didn't even play. But they have a powerful patron in "the lousy film director" Mikhail Chiaureli, who "makes movies about Stalin, drinks wine with Beria, and, by the way, is the Georgian first violinist's uncle. Presumably nobody needs to be reminded of the particular connection at the very top that a Georgian quartet might have.

Barshai explains that "yesterday all Moscow was talking about us, and Oistrakh was looking for us all evening."

I thought he wanted to congratulate us. Far from it! He didn't even mention the competition. He invited us to play the Chausson concerto [Chausson's Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet] with him and [pianist Lev] Oborin. He said they would change the program and print up a new poser. "Right now," Oistrakh said, "I just want your names to appear on posters. Give my regards to the whole quartet." I understood everything. That's why he wasn't on the jury -- he didn't want to be mixed up in this dirty business.

Famous as Oistrakh was, all aspects of the professional life of a musician in the Soviet Union depended on the good will of the Culture Ministry, making this act, or rather a series of acts (his withdrawal from the jury would certainly have been noticed) on his part of almost unimaginable defiance, one might even say of aggravated effrontery against the cultural dictatorship, and an act of considerable courage. Not surprisingly, Dubinsky never forgot it.

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[2/13/2011] Sampling the world of Shostakovich's string quartets with Nos. 6 and 14 (continued)

The Fitzwilliam Quartet plays the central Adagio of the Shostakovich 14th Quartet.

SHOSTAKOVICH'S QUARTET NO. 6

I'm not going to say much about the Sixth Quartet, except to encourage you to listen to how many different kinds of music it embodies, shifting and transforming constantly. (I always think of Haydn, the classical composer who "developed" his musical materials most compulsively, never waiting for the formal "development" section of a sonata-form movement.) This is also the challenge of the performers: to fully embrace and realize each moment.

Here's the generally jolly first movement.

Quartet No. 6 in G, Op. 101: i. Allegretto
Borodin Quartet (Rostislav Dubinsky and Yaroslav Alexandrov, violins; Dmitri Shebalin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello). Melodiya/Chandos, recorded in the early '60s

Here's the second movement -- a little waltz!

Quartet No. 6 in G, Op. 101: ii. Moderato con moto
Borodin Quartet

Here's the suitably more reflective, and distinctly darker-character slow movement.

Quartet No. 6 in G, Op. 101: iii. Lento
Borodin Quartet

Where would you expect the piece to go from here?

Quartet No. 6 in G, Op. 101: iv. Lento; Allegretto
Borodin Quartet


THE COMPLETE SIXTH QUARTET

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 6 in G, Op. 101:
i. Allegretto
ii. Moderato con moto
iii. Lento
iv. Lento; Allegretto

St. Petersburg Quartet (Alla Aranovskaya and Ilya Teplyakov, violins; Konstantin Kats, viola; Leonid Shukaev, cello). Hyperion, recorded April 1999

SHOSTAKOVICH'S QUARTET NO. 14

The 14th Quartet is a large, generally dark and introspective piece, whose three movements -- performed without interruption -- are strikingly close in length and weight. Overall pacing of individual performances may vary, but the proportions tend to remain more or less constant. Our three performances time out:

Glinka Quartet -- 8:54, 9:06. and 8:32
Shostakovich Quartet -- 8:44, 9:39, 8:22
St. Petersburg Quartet -- 9:09, 10:01, 9:14

Here's the first minute and a half or so of the first movement, establishing the brooding, spiky mood, rising from the quartet's sonic depths to its heights and dropping back down again. Our excerpt performances are by the Moscow-based Glinka Quartet, which was founded in 1964 and, like the original Borodin, was split in half by emigration, in this case of the bottom half, violist Alexander Galkovsky and cellist Alexander Korchagin emigrating separately to the Netherlands in 1978 (later forming a New Glinka Quartet). Left-behind second violinist Sergei Pishchugin quickly found a new home with the Shostakovich Quartet.

1st movement opening
Glinka Quartet (Alexander Arenkov and Sergei Pishchugin, violins; Misha Geller, viola; Dmitri Ferschman, cello). Praga, Czech radio broadcast, 1976

Now we hear the last minute and a half or so of the movement, which has undergone a distinct alteration in mood. We start at roughly 8:07 of the movement. Note in particular what happens at 0:13 of our little excerpt.

1st movement conclusion, "The Theme"
Glinka Quartet

Here's the complete first movement:

Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp, Op. 142: i. Allegretto
Shostakovich Quartet (Andrei Shishlov and Sergei Pishchugin, violins; Alexander Galkovsky, viola; Alexander Korchagin, cello). Melodiya/Olympia, recorded 1988

2nd movement opening
Glinka Quartet

We pick up not quite halfway through the movement, at 3:44, and hear a distinct change in mood, segue-ing into a lushly lyrical major-key moment at 0:35 of our excerpt -- and then, at 1:10, what do we suddenly hear?

2nd movement, "The Theme"
Glinka Quartet

Here's the complete second movement:

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp, Op. 142: ii. Adagio
Shostakovich Quartet

The third movement plunges us into a new sound world, one that -- as usual with Shostakovich -- is immediately transforming itself.

3rd movement opening
Glinka Quartet

Now we pick up at 5:20 of the movement, and continue to the end. And what do we hear at 0:43 and 0:54?

3rd movement, "The Theme"
Glinka Quartet

And here's the complete third movement:

Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp, Op. 142: iii. Allegretto; Adagio
Shostakovich Quartet


THE COMPLETE 14TH QUARTET

Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp, Op. 142:
i. Allegretto . . . ii. Adagio . . . iii. Allegretto; Adagio

St. Petersburg Quartet (Alla Aranovskaya and Ilya Teplyakov, violins; Alexei Koptev, viola; Leonid Shukaev, cello). Hyperion, recorded December 2002-January 2003


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[2/12/2011] Preview: Remembering an impromptu encore performance of the Shostakovich 4th String Quartet (continued)

Only the first 13 Shostakovich quartets had been available to the original Borodin Quartet at the time first violinist Rostislav Dubinsky emigrated from the Soviet Union to the U.S., in 1975.


WE HAVE THE DINNER GUESTS IN THE HOTEL
RESTAURANT FOR THEIR POST-CONCERT DO

Not surprisingly for a gathering of Russians (and other Soviets), there was a lot of drinking -- a lot of drinking. The gathering was interrupted by the reappearance of an unsavory leather-jacketed man who had earlier been thrown out of the restaurant.

He came up to the table, looked everyone over, as if deciding whom to address, stopped at Shostakovich, and drawled, with a Ukrainian accent, "Russian people! Would you let me sit with you a little at the same table?"

The waiters looked into the room, ready to throw him out at the first sign from us.

"Of course, of course," said Shostakovich hurriedly. "Sit down with us at the same, so to speak, table."

The man was offered a chair and a glass of wine.

"Thank you for not scorning an ordinary man," he said, and raised his glass in the air. "To the Russian people!" he shouted, draining his glass in one breath and looking around triumphantly.

Conversation at the table had stopped. Our guest evidently felt that he had impressed the "Russian people," because he reached for the bottle, poured for himself, and suddenly, imitating a Jewish accent, began in an unpleasant voice, "Abram! What front did you fight on? The Tashkent line? And how much did your medals cost? And how much did you sell them for?"

"What filth!" Shostakovich shuddered. He reached for the vodka bottle. Seizing it and pouring with trembling hands, he spilled vodka on the tablecloth.

There was a heavy silence around the table. How often, in the presence of rudeness, cultured people are petrified! [Composer Nikolai] Peyko [the person who had invited the quartet out to post-concert dinner], however, marched right up to the man, who stood up, sensing no good. Next to him, the skinny Peyko seemed like a little boy. Looking the intruder in the face, Peyko said very distinctly, "You, it turns out, are shit!"

The man gasped in surprise. "What?"

"Shit!" Peyko repeated firmly. "We welcomed you to the table as a man, and you . . . Get out!" he shouted.

In Dubinsky's telling it took five waiters to drag the man out of the restaurant.

I glanced around carefully. Not counting Berlinsky [who, for the record, was half-Jewish], I was probably the only Jew at the table! But around me were the kind of Russians who, at the least hint of anti-Semitism, are mortally offended, both for the Russian nation and for Russian culture.

Everything was quiet. People were trying not to look at one another. I felt there was a way to save the evening and, without thinking, I said, "What if we bring our instruments and play Dmitri Dmitrievich's quartet one more time?"

Everyone spoke together.

"Please do . . ."

"A wonderful idea!"

"What do you think, Dmitri Dmitrievich?"

"Well, why not? Go on, of course, very good . . . Let's play it once more . . . "

"I can't play," said [cellist Valentin] Berlinsky. "I'm drunk."

"That doesn't matter," answered Shostakovich. "That's, you know, even better . . . "

"I'm drunk, too," said [violist Dmitri] Shebalin. "But I'm a sportsman!"

"Bravo, bravo!"

Dubinsky asks "Nikolai Ivanovich" Peyko, the composer who first proposed dining with the Borodin members, to help him fetch their instruments "while my colleagues have one more drink for courage." But second violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov, with whom Dubinsky had the most difficult relationship of his quartet colleagues, intervened, offering to come with Dubinsky instead of Peyko. He wasn't really trying to be helpful.

We left the restaurant and headed for the elevator.

"Let's take the stairs," suggested Alexandrov. "I want to tell you something."

We climbed up one flight.

"Well, I could refuse to play now," he began uncertainly.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't have the right to propose a concert without the agreement of the whole quartet."

"You saw the situation, and Shostakovich's face, when that thug . . ."

"True. There was no time to discuss it, so you shouldn't have suggested anything."

"Everyone was so glad."

"That's their business. But I've warned you. Today I'll play, but it's the last time. Remember!"

"I will," I said.

We each took two instruments and two music stands and headed downstairs without speaking. Four chairs were already waiting for us in a corner of the room. I opened my case, got out the violin, checked the tuning . . . And suddenly I felt an unusual lightness and freedom in both hands. What was it? Surely not a glass or two of wine? If so, then such a creative path threatened to become extremely dangerous.

And the quartet prepared to play. We're going to hear the individual movements played both by the Borodin (the same performance we heard last night) and by the St. Petersburg Quartet.

I looked at my colleagues. Alexandrov was tensely tuning his instrument and probably cursing me. Shebalin and Berlinsky had clearly drunk to excess, and it showed. The former wisely did not try to tune his instrument, but repeated that he was a "sportsman," while the latter's hands were visibly uncoordinated. He tried his solo from the second movement, and at one point his fingers turned up on one string while his bow was on another. He laughed and turned to Shostakovich.

"Dmitri Dmitrievich, forgive me if something is not just so . . ."

"Everything will be 'so,' don't worry, everything will be 'so' . . ."

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 4 in D, Op. 83:
i. Allegretto
Borodin QuartetSt. Petersburg Quartet

We began to play. In the first movement there were problems. Someone was always late, and it proved impossible to lead the quartet; instead, it was led by whoever played the slowest.

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 4 in D, Op. 83:
ii. Andantino
Borodin QuartetSt. Petersburg Quartet

The second movement went better. A peculiar, drunkenly rhythmical balance, from which it was dangerous to diverge, had settled in the music. We played fairly successfully up to the recapitulation, where the initial melancholy melody reappeared. Several voices began to sing along with us. . .

It really means something if people sing Shostakovich's music!

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 4 in D, Op. 83:
iii. Scherzo: Allegretto
Borodin QuartetSt. Petersburg Quartet

They sang along again in the scherzo, which we played in the manner of a street gang's song. With the discordant voices there appeared a particular musical effect, which would be impossible to write into a quartet score. This seemed to please Shostakovich, because he also started singing . . .

This was unexpected and even frightening. I never heard Shostakovich sing before or after that evening.

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 4 in D, Op. 83:
iv. Allegretto
Borodin QuartetSt. Petersburg Quartet

Gradually the quartet got used to the drunkenness, and by the "Jewish" finale we were all playing confidently. After the incident with the man in the black leather jacket, it rang out in a somewhat different key.

There was neither applause nor praise, only the long silence that is so necessary after such music, until at last Peyko said, "We have to drink. And right away!"

Around the table people stirred; there was the sound of pouring liquid and the clink of glasses.

I put my violin in its case and furtively watched our vice minister. I saw his frozen stare and his forehead covered with sweat. It was clearer than ever, to him and to all of us, why this music had been banned, and not very understandable why they had suddenly permitted it. Schepalin rose decisively from the table. "Dmitri Dmitrievich," he said to Shostakovich, "it's already late, and tomorrow we have an important meeting early in the morning. I think it's time we got some rest."

"Yes, yes, it's already late and time to go, time to go," Shostakovich hurriedly repeated, also standing up. "My gratitude to the quartet. It's time for us . . . And the quartet . . . Thanks very much. You see, it's late already, and early tomorrow morning . . . "

Schepalin headed for the door, and Shostakovich hastened after him.

"We still have to drink," said Peyko, and in a sort of frenzy added, "To Shostakovich!"

Nothing better could be suggested now. We all raised our glasses and held them in the air, until the mystical link between Shostakovich and the wine became tangible . . .

THE COMPLETE SHOSTAKOVICH FOURTH QUARTET

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartet No. 4 in D, Op. 83

i. Allegretto
ii. Andantino
iii. Scherzo: Allegretto . . . iv. Allegretto

Borodin Quaret (Rostislav Dubinsky and Yaroslav Alexandrov, violins; Dmitri Shebalin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello). Melodiya/Chandos, recorded in the early '60s
St. Petersburg Quartet (Alla Aranovskaya and Ilya Teplyakov, violins; Konstantin Kats, viola; Leonid Shukaev, cello). Hyperion, recorded April 1999


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

As promised, we sample Shostakovich's Sixth and 14th Quartets.


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