Schnittke - String Quartet nr. 3

I revisited Schnittke's Third Quartet in the interpretation by the Borodin Quartet. It's a Virgin CD that has long been deleted from the catalogue. I didn't take me a long time to appreciate that the Kronos Quartet's reading is vastly superior. Take just the work's two opening minutes where Schnittke introduces this polystylistic jumble of themes. The CD booklet identifies them now as a Lassus quotation, the main theme of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue en Shostakovich's personal musical monogram DSCH (transposed these four notes also happen to be the first four notes of Beethoven's fugal subject). The Borodin present an almost romantic travesty of the introductory Lassus, with buckets full of rubato and dramatic pauses, whilst in the Kronos version it sounds as I think a quartet transcription of a polyphonic piece ought to sound: eerily neutral, disembodied almost. It immediately transports us to another, ghostly world which I associate very much with Schnittke. Then, the Kronos offer a superb rendition of what sounds to me like a folksong (or perhaps a revolutionary song; I can't hear Beethoven's fugue or Shostakovich's monogram in this; it's from 1:43 onwards in the Kronos recording): it's strangely morose and uplifting at the same time. The Kronos' strings evoke the sound of a primitive fiddle and bagpipe ensemble. It speaks of destitution but also of belief and quiet determination. There is a freshness that evokes the wide open expanses of the motherland. With the Borodin we hear nothing of that at all. It just sounds as if they are out of sync. It's a jumble that gets rather on my nerves. With that very unpromising start I lost most of my appetite for this recording. It's not a catastrophe front to back, however. The Agitato is even quite good, but doesn't surpass the Kronos. Interestingly, the Borodin observe a repeat of the central section, lengthening the movement with a full three minutes. But also in the finale there is this latent tearfulness which I find to be squarely out of place. So after careful listening (I put the two versions side by side in Garageband) it's quite clear that the Borodin are no match at all for the Kronos.

Incidentally, in the Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet, Tully Potter is rather disparaging about the Borodin Quartet:

The violist Rudolf Barshai was involved in two noted ensembles, the second being the Tchaikovsky Quartet, whose career was ended by the untimely death of its leader Yulian Sitkovetsky. The first, which became known as the Borodin Quartet after Barshai's departure, has now been going for more than half a century and includes no founder member, although the cellist Valentin Berlinsky has been aboard since its early days. He is perhaps responsible for the way this quartet - which admittedly plays to a superlative standard - hands its interpretation down from generation to generation like holy writ. Much of its music-making is mannered and unspontaneous, with its trademark senza vibrato overused. Capable of memorable performances on a good day, the Borodin Quartet is far from deserving the status it enjoys in some quarters - its Shostakovich interpretations have been wildly overpraised. Some of the problems stemmed of its founding leader Rostislav Dubinsky, a preening, narcissistic player. His successor Mikhail Kopelman brought a more human face to the ensemble, and his successor is perhaps the best violinist per se that the group has had. So it continues to evolve ..."

Another venerated ensemble gets a similar sneer:

Bartok and Beethoven were also the specialities of an another expatriate Magyar group that Sandor Vegh formed in 1940, not long after leaving the New Hungarian Quartet. He was able to keep his eponymous quartet together for more than three decades, even though his colleagues disliked him intensely. Végh himself could be an infuriatingly sloppy player - live recordings made as early as 1950 reveal him playing excruciatingly out of tune - and the group often sounded as if its members had not met before coming on stage (they lived in four separate cities). Vegh's outsize personality generally got them through, however. Records made in the 1950s and 1960s were variable and sometimes suprisingly dull; but in the early 1970s the players pulled themselves together long enough to make fine Bartok and Beethoven cycles. After the group fell apart, Végh soldiered on with two different formations, but with mixed success ..."

Quite funny.