Prokofiev - String Quartet nr. 2

Prokofiev's Second String Quartet, op. 92, was composed in the fall of 1941, the Soviet Union's nadir in the Second World War. But for Prokofiev it was not a bad time at all. He was shipped out of Moscow with some of his fellow composers and accompanied by his new partner, Mira Mendelssohn, half his age. His wife, Lina, and children stayed behind in besieged Moscow. They travelled to Nalchik in the foothills of the Caucasus, then to Tbilisi and onwards to Alma Ata in Kazachstan. Whilst they sometimes had to make do with precarious material circumstances, the living was generally good and the exotic locales stimulating. For Prokofiev it was a period of amazing creative impetus in which he wrote, amongst other things, the first version of his War and Peace and the film music to Ivan The Terrible. He also finished the Seventh Sonata. The Second Quartet was written during the first stage of their nomadic existence, in Nalchik. In it, Prokofiev relies heavily on lokal folk music (hence it has been labeled 'On Kabardinian Themes').

I hadn't heard this work before. Whilst the First Quartet has the reputation of being more 'abstract' and polyphonic, I find the Second to be skillfully evading the trap of cheap exoticism. I don't have the impression that Prokofiev was reaching in his second drawer here. At least in the performance of the St Peterburg Quartet the music has genuine fiber. The second movement is a carefree and sweet but also deeply felt Adagio, almost with the character of a serenade, a Ständchen in which the mature composer revels in his newfound love. But there is also something of the eery silence that seems to pervade these foreign territories. I also like the motoric drive of the final Allegro and its weird cadenza-like sections for the lead violin and the cello. I am definitely interested in listening to an alternative version (as the Auroras on Naxos do not really come into play), preferably of the Haas.