String Quartet No. 3, etc.

Classical albums often have unimaginative and unwieldy titles merely listing the pieces they contain. This one labours under the title String Quartet No. 3, Two Pieces For String Octet, Piano Quintet, these all being compositions by Dmitri Shostakvich, performed here by the Borodin Quartet, who are joined by the Prokofiev Quartet for the 'Two Pieces' and by pianist Sviatoslav Richter for the Quintet. I had heard this version of the Quintet via a download some time ago, and had subsequently bought a different performance of it on CD which hadn't quite hit the spot in the same way, hence my eventually buying this disc.

I'd been slightly reluctant to acquire it as I already owned a performace of the String Quartet No. 3 by The Borodin Quartet, and, shelf-space being limited, I prefer not to have duplicates. On the other hand, the perfomance I already had was recorded in the '60s by the Quartet's original line-up, whereas this one dates from 1983, by which time Mikhail Kopelman had replaced Rosislav Dubinsky as first violinist and Andrei Abramenkov had taken over from Yarolsav Alexandrov as the second. As it happens, the original line-up also feature on this disc in the 'Two Pieces for String Octet'.

It didn't work out badly as I'd not really given Quartet No. 3 a proper hearing before, typically favouring Nos. 4, 8 and 10 when listening that the other, earlier recording. Having it on this CD has enhanced my appreciation of it considerably. Meanwhile I love this performance of the Quintet as much as ever. It's a riveting live recording made in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire in December '83.

Comments

Complete String Quartets

While the string quartets of Nikolai Yakovievich Myaskovsky (1881-1950) were all published in the Soviet era, a few of them had pre-revolutionary origins. Two quartets he wrote in 1911 and '09 while a conservatory student re-surfaced some twenty years later designated as Quartets Nos. 3 and 4. An even earlier "schoolboy" piece was later re-worked more radically as Quartet No. 10, premiered in 1945. Myaskovsky partook of an ample share of the turmoil and tragedy of his times: he was wounded and shell-shocked after service on the front line in World War I, and his father, who had been a high-ranking military engineer, was brutally murdered by a revolutionary mob. Despite that, his music, even at its most sombre, hasn't the black bile or biting sarcasm of Shostakovich's, or of his friend Prokofiev's. Of the works collected here, in excellent early '80s performances by the Taneyev Quartet, only Quartet No. 1 has any significantly metallic tang of early S...

Ein Schattenspiel, etc.

Georg Friedrich Haas is a contemporary Austrian composer of "art music". "Haas's style recalls that of György Ligeti in its use of micropolyphony, microintervals and the exploitation of the overtone series; he is often characterized as a leading exponent of spectral music" says wikipedia. Only a relative few of his many compositions have been issued on CD - many more of them can be found on YouTube. On this 2020 disc are three of his works in which standard classical instrumentation is augmented and altered by "live electronics". Two are string quartets and one is for solo piano. Is a string quartet still really a quartet if there are meanwhile some other people with laptops busily twizzling the sound? There is a live performance video of the 'String Quartet No. 7', the first work on the disc, where the JACK Quartet are supplemented by a trio of sound boffins to realise the composition. Whether it's properly a quartet or a septet is neithe...

Influencías

In my original blogging days, I would occasionally run giveaways to offload unwanted books or CDs to whomever claimed them. Sometimes the recipients would offer to send me something in return. It was in this way that, ca. 2007, a Catalan correspondent sent me Influencías: a CD of perfomances by the Barcelona-based Cuarteto Casals. The CD begins with Maurice Ravel's renowned string quartet: I hadn't known the piece before receiving this disc, but I was sold on it by this fresh & bright performance. Next is a quartet called 'Vistes al Mar' by the Catalan composer Eduardo Toldrá. Its evocative maritime movements are prefaced by recitations of poems by Joan Maragall, a Catalan author whose works directly inspired the piece. Lastly there's an arrangement of Joaquín Turina's atmospheric 'Oración del Torero', originally composed for a lute quartet. I'm on the fence about the cover photo: it's a well-composed picture & not a bad idea, but with 2...

This is a Recording

Search This Blog