Tchaikovsky: String Quartet nr. 1 - Shostakovich: String Quartet nr. 7 - Schubert: String Quartet nr. 14

On Thursday the Pavel Haas Quartet was passing through Brussels. I've been mightily impressed by their recordings of the Janacek and Prokofiev quartets. Together with the Belcea Quartet they count amongst my favourite ensembles. Although I really can't point out an obvious shortcoming from the Quartet's side, this concert didn't quite capture my imagination. Maybe I was preoccupied, maybe it was the uncharacteristically unfocused and restless audience, maybe even it was the Conservatoire hall's acoustics which are generally generous towards chamber ensembles but now seemed to rob the Haas from the filigree textures and wonderful plasticity I've come to expect from them. They didn't sound as softly grained as the Jerusalem, and not as marvelously layered as the Belcea. On the whole the Haas' tone struck me as full-bodied and virile, but also a trifle prosaic. Maybe it was also the dynamics amongst the quartet members, which didn't seem to communicate overly generously amongst themselves. Or maybe it was just the repertoire. The highlight was Shostakovich's Seventh Quartet (op. 108; 1960), which is sadly also his shortest. It is dedicated to his wife Nina, in memoriam. In its combination of terseness, wistfulness and violence it's characteristic for Shostakovich's later work. The Haas' X-ray like reading went to the bone, unlike the Jerusalem's more cultured and cosmetic approach to the Tenth Quartet a few weeks ago. Tchaikovsky's String Quartet nr. 1, op. 11 was the first piece on the menu. Although it's a lovely piece in its own right, it's not really the kind of music I'm now tuned into. But the first movement impressed me by its lyrical ebullience and it's hard not to fall, at least for a moment, under the spell of the warmhearted Andante cantabile. In the Scherzo my thoughts started to drift however, and they didn't regroup until the lacklustre applause at the end of the piece. After the break we heard Schubert's most loved quartet, his Death and the Maiden (D810; 1824). I must say it is a work that for some reason I have never been able to fully embrace. And that didn't change on Thursday night, whatever the merits of the Haas Quartet's performance. As an encore we were treated to the slow second movement of Dvorak's American Quartet.

Debussy: String Quartet - Shostakovich: String Quartet nr. 10 - Mozart: String Quartet KV 421

I still have to report on a live concert I attended last week at the Brussels conservatory. Thanks to CB for the kind invitation (once again!). The Jerusalem Quartet was visiting with a very interesting programme: Mozart's Quartet nr. 15, Shostakovich's Tenth Quartet and the Debussy Quartet. I had never heard this Israeli ensemble before. I was soon convinced that we were listening to a top class quartet which to my mind excelled with an exceedingly cultured and softly grained sound. In a way their playing, eschewing expressive idiosyncracies, felt very old style.

The Mozart quartet (1783) was an eye-opener (or rather an ear-opener). It's the second of the Haydn quartets and, as is the case with the KV 310 and KV 457 (1784) piano sonatas I listened to recently, the only work in the minor key in that particular collection. Clearly a work with heft and the Jerusalems played it poised and earnestly. They were not able, however, to impart a similar sense of inevitability to the Shostakovich quartet. The op. 110 is a late work, composed in 1964 and one of those wonderfully wry and luminous works of the ageing master. It's perhaps the most beautiful quartet of the whole set. I also like it a lot in Barshai's rendering for chamber ensemble. The Jerusalem Quartet's reading sounded a trifle self-conscious and manicured to my ears. As in many Shostakovich late works, there is this very characteristic mixture of childlike simplicity and violence. Despite the obvious care lavished on the performance, neither was brought off very convincingly. I also thought the long breaks between movements marred the flow of the music.

After the break there was the Debussy Quartet (1893) as 'plat de résistance'. A marvelous work that shows the young Debussy at his most accomplished. Despite the freedom of form, the piece sounds composed through and through. In its multifaceted sense of balance the quartet has jewel-like qualities. It strikes me as an undercover symphony in the garb of a chamber work. Indeed, I'm not surprised that the work has been re-orchestrated for larger ensemble (although it's not clear who the author of the adaptation is; this version certainly is not widely known). One thing that is hard to overlook, particularly in the slow movement, is the kinship with the music of Vaughan Williams. The latter studied with Ravel for a short while (in 1908) and in that short period he must have thoroughly have absorbed the French idiom. Anyway, Debussy's chamber music does not cease to amaze me and I'm putting it well ahead of his piano and orchestral works. The Jerusalem Quartet's performance was a cause for joy: lithe, fluid and strong. Their tone is full and has the patina of well worn beautiful objects. Debussy would have liked it, I'm sure. I've been listening in parallel to recordings with the Tokyo String Quartet and the Belcea Quartet, both of which are of very high quality. The Belcea performance strikes me as a tad more characterful and seems to thoroughly deserve its Gramophone award (in 2001).

The concert was concluded with a brief encore from one of the Haydn op. 20 quartets which reconfirmed the ensemble's mastery in the classical repertoire. Their performance captured the inimitable blend of simplicity and sublime sophistication that is so typical for Haydn to perfection. I'm certainly going to look out for other opportunities to listen to this quartet.

Prokofiev: Scythian Suite - Szymanovski: Symphony nr. 4 - Shostakovich: Symphony nr. 5

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit in at the rehearsals and attend a very special concert. The I, Culture Orchestra is a youth orchestra that has been put together as a flagship cultural project for the Polish Presidency of the EU. It assembles young musicians from the 'Eastern Partnership' (Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Belorussia) and from Poland. Many of them are having their first experiences at playing in an orchestra. The project is the brainchild of two conductors: Pawel Kotla and Neville Marriner. I happened to meet the Pawel's spouse many years ago at a remote airfield in the Gabonese jungle. Recently she re-established contact and yesterday we had an enjoyable lunch in the company of her husband. Afterwards I was allowed to sit in at the rehearsals and later on I attended the concert. I,Culture brought a long and adventurous programme: the rarely heard Scythian Suite (aka Ala and Lolly), Prokofiev's op. 20, followed by Szymanovski's equally unfamiliar Fourth Symphony, op. 60 (Sinfonia Concertante). Shostakovich's popular Symphony nr. 5 completed the programme. 

This was the orchestra's seventh concert, ever. The ensemble was established last August and spent the month in residence at Gdansk. Then there were a few more weeks through September and October in preparation of their European tour which started in Krakow. Then Stockholm last week. Transit to Berlin, where they played at the Philharmonie. Today Brussels and then onwards to London, Madrid and Warsaw. Unfortunately in Brussels they were offered the Conservatoire and not the Bozar as a venue. It's not a bad hall, but it has seen much better days and it is rather small for a 110-strong symphony orchestra. Pawel worked hard during the rehearsals to recalibrate the sound to the venue.

The rehearsals were promising. Pawel worked his way sequentially through the three pieces, selecting bits and pieces, spending most time on matters of ensemble and dynamics. In my opinion the first violins seemed the Achilles heel of the orchestra. I found them a little lacklustre during rehearsal and would have like them to dig a bit deeper in the strings. But otherwise the orchestra seemed to be doing fine. Brass and winds seemed to be in great form. I was very impressed by the first flute, a young lady that produced an impressively authoritative and silken tone.

Attending the rehearsals did not prepare me, however, for the concert itself. What I heard there was very much in another league. Of course, in one way or another you can tell that this ensemble has not had a lot of time to really gel. That being said, it is astonishing at what level these young musicians were playing. Clearly the whole ensemble, including the strings, gave themselves wholeheartedly to the task. There were a few blemishes with intonation problems in the first violins and one or two hickups with the first horn, but they were few and far between.

The Prokofiev Suite came off very well, suitably agressive and with a richly layered sound. I have always had the Abbado/LSO version in my ears and this performance certainly didn't pale in comparison. Here is a nice audio excerpt.

It was a long time since I have last heard the Szymanovski symphony. It is a very special work that combines a folksy, propulsive kind of energy and an angular neoclassicism with a rich impressionist vein. Debussy and Roussel come to mind more than once, particularly in the slow movement. The symphony-concerto was composed in 1932, roughly contemporaneous with Bartok's Pianoconcerto nr. 2. By that time Szymanovski was already wrestling with financial difficulties. Compounded with health problems they would lead to his untimely death just a few years later, in 1937. The music doesn't reveal anything about the challenging circumstances in which it was composed. It is vigorously animated and combines a collage-like structure with a genuinely symphonic undercurrent. Pawel Kotla quite successfully was able to align these different forces into a convincing whole. The rapport between orchestra and soloist Peter Jablonski seemed excellent to me (apparently that hadn't been the case in earlier performances). This is a work that I would like to relisten too soon.

As I didn't look too keenly forward to the Shostakovich, I assumed that the Szymanovski for me would be the 'pièce the resistance' of the evening. It's just that I'm out of the mood for symphonic Shostakovich for the time being. The early pages of the symphony confirmed this sentiment. Now that I'm so deeply into Debussy, the symphonic music of Shostakovich strikes me as simple, even primitive (I had the same impression when I returned to Shostakovich after an extended period of listening to Bach). But soon the performance started to grip me and I must say that by the end of the first movement I was captivated. The scherzo came off wonderfully, mixing a fairy-tale, Nutcracker kind of atmosphere with violent sarcasm. It was the first time I heard it this way. The Largo was taken slowly but very soberly, without bathos. The clean lines reminded me more of plainchant than Mahler. I think it was a considerable challenge for the orchestra but Kotla didn't compromise. In the finale then the spirit of 'thou shalt rejoice' was very convincingly summoned. All in all it was a very convincing performance that spoke to the heart without drawing undue attention to itself and without sacrificing the overall architecture. I think that is a pretty impressive feat for any orchestra. It's good that in times of financial austerity money continues to be available for these kinds of worthwhile projects. I wish Pawel all the very best with his project.

Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony - Takemitsu: Requiem for Strings - Tchaikovsky: Symphony nr. 6

Another week without serious listening went by. Several reasons for that. Submitted my thesis on Monday and then had to throw myself headlong in three project that are running in parallel. So little time. Further, I am still exploring this whole streaming concept so I am reading up on it as much as I can, whilst trying out snippets here and there. With this, my interest in the audiophile side of the listening has again reared its ugly head, so I have been sampling a few things purely for comparative purposes. And, finally, I haven't settled down yet on what I would like to in the next few weeks. Shall I continue with the Bartok project which is still incomplete? What about the stack of string quartets that is waiting for me? Or maybe it is a better idea to relax and just hop between genres until I feel the gravitational pull from something or other?

Anyway, I do need to catch up on a few things I did listen to in the past few weeks. From the BP Digital Concert Hall I have not heard a lot yet. In fact I have limited myself to just one concert. A rather odd affair as it was a memorial concert on the occasion of 25 years Chernobyl (April 26, 1986) that brought together several ensembles in the Berliner Philharmonie: the strings of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin and a Ukrainian mixed chamber choir Credo.

The programme consisted of a long introductory part in which Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony op. 110a was played by the strings of the BPO, altercating with three pieces for choir, and then also texts declamated by two readers (Therese Affolter and Christian Brückner). The whole thing had a theatrical aspect with the strings arranged in a semi-circle (without conductor), backed by the speakers and choir. Despite the unconventional setup it was a gripping performance. The Chamber Symphony was brought with appropriate gravitas without sounding morose, the choir pieces were heartstoppingly beautiful and ravishingly sung and the speakers did quite well (particularly Affolter stood out).

After the break it was the Staatskapelle's turn, conducted by Andrei Boreyko. Allegedly it was his debut performance with the orchestra. I have one Boreyko CD in my collection: Schnittke's Faust Cantata complemented by Bach pieces (with the Hamburg Philharmonic, on Berlin Classics). He is known for enterprising programming. (Soon we will be able to hear more of that as the Belgian National Orchestra have been able to lure him as chief conductor from the 2012-13 season onwards. Next year, in April, he will make his Bozar debut. With Boreyko in Brussels and De Waart and Herreweghe in Antwerp it seems our orchestras are finally getting serious.) First there was a brief but beautiful piece, unbeknownst to me: the Requiem for Strings by Takemitsu. Up to this day I haven't quite fallen for Takemitsu's music which sounds like a somewhat diluted impressionism to me. But this early piece (1957) is very striking, almost Bartokian in the dark suppleness of its long lines. It put the young Japanese composer immediately on the map when it was (accidentally) auditioned by Stravinsky during one his visits to Tokyo. I thought the performance by the Staatskapelle was quite successful.

The concert was brought to a close by Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique". I was rather less impressed by this reading which didn't seem to plumb the depths of some of the others I know. Altogether a very unusual but well received concert on the DCH.

Shostakovich: String Quartet nr. 7

I'm happy to be pick up the thread again after a long spell. That interval is partly due to the holiday period and partly to the fact that I had to dig in to write my masterpaper for the urban planning program. That's now just been submitted and now we can free up some space in our mind for other things.

I haven't been doing any serious listening over that past period. The only little thing I have to mention is a short Shostakovich quartet (at about 15 minutes the Seventh is, in fact, his shortest) in a 1990 recording from Snape Maltings concert hall. Excellent reading of a typical piece of the mature Shostakovich, mixing brutal violence with a wry kind of simplicity.

Shostakovich: String Quartet nr. 10/Symphony for Strings op. 118a

I've known Shostakovich's op. 118 (1964) for a long time, but chiefly in the Barshai version for string orchestra (op. 118a). It's a work that in its earthy, autumnal splendour is very dear to me. Shostakovich reduces his language to almost artless simplicity. Particularly the last movement is a long, melancholy and seemingly aimless ramble. But whilst it sounds amazingly lapidary, there is solid craftsmanship behind. That's the difference with a piece like Torke's Chalk, which has the prosaicness, but misses the craftsmanship and, hence, sinks into banality.

I listened to both the transcription and the original version for string quartet. Whilst the Fitzwilliam offer a very committed reading, and Barshai's textures (in his own recording) are bit thick, overall I still prefer the orchestral version. I think it is extremely difficult as an ensemble to put the finger on the emotional point of gravity of this work, with the inner movements pulling in different directions (the furious scherzo, the bleak Adagio) and the outer movements being particularly elusive. The Fitzwilliam bring a good deal nervousness to the long finale. Barshai, on the other hand, is extremely relaxed which lends the music a wonderfully dreamlike atmosphere. Also the slightly heavier bass section underlines the bourdon character of some of the writing music, reinforcing the whiff of exoticism that is colouring the music (it was written in Armenia after all). And he shapes the movement expertly around the central climax (where the adagio theme drops in above the movement's downspiralling main theme) which is delivered more forcefully by the orchestral sized forces. So, despite the relative slowness, I find Barshai's reading is never getting dull. I wonder what the Haas Quartet would do with this score ...

Shostakovich - String Quartet nr. 1

I feel like a quartet spree and am planning to listen to 10 unfamiliar quartets in the next 2 weeks or so. Seeking out unfamiliar repertoire is not so hard as I'm not so well at home in the quartet literature. And whatever I may have heard I need to spend more time with. So basically everything is ok. I'm taking Prokofiev's Second as the starting point and have meanwhile moved on to Shostakovich's String Quartet nr. 1, op. 49.

Shostakovich's First Quartet is a short and sweet affair in radiant C major. A trifle, however, it is not. The work already points forward to the later quartets, such as the Ninth. The composer himself thought it was 'spring-like'. It doesn't seem to make sense to write something innocuous like that in 1938, at the height of Stalinist terror and in the wake of vicious ideological attack. Or maybe it does. Maxim was just born. And likely the composer was engaged in a process of Innere Emigration. Back to whatever serenity remains in one's own core.

I listened to three versions: the Brodsky Quartet (Teldec, 1989), the Fitzwilliam Quartet (Decca, around 1976) and the Eder Quartet (Naxos, 1994). There is no doubt that the Fitzwilliam is head and shoulders above the rest. The Eders are docile and seem to lack ideas. The Brodskys have too many ideas but lack a coherent vision to hold them together. The Fitzwilliam Quartet shower the work with delicate luminosity. The tone is rich, mellow, luxuriant. Under their hands the emotional complexities of particularly the first and last movements emerge. The introductory Moderato, with its long lines, assumes a poignancy that goes straight to the heart. It almost turns into a lamento. Oh God, that Russian summer of 1938 ... (Wikipedia: ... by 1938, however, the oppression had become so extensive that it was damaging the infrastructure, economy and even the armed forces of the Soviet state, prompting Stalin to wind the purge down. In September, Beria was appointed head of the Main Administration of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he succeeded Yezhov as NKVD head (Yezhov himself was executed in 1940). The NKVD itself was then purged, with half its personnel replaced by Beria loyalists, many of them from the Caucasus). The finale is boisterous (a study almost of the Sixth Symphony's finale) but once in a while the Fitzwilliams flash their teeth in anger. The 1976 Decca recording is excellent.

It's quiet around the Fitzwilliam Quartet these days. At least they don't seem to play in the top league anymore. I looked it up and they still exist, after more than 40 years, and seem to have made some recordings recently on the Linn label. Their sympathetic website gives a good overview of their repertoire. Alan George, viola, is the only founding member still in place (since 1968). The quartet acquired renown because of their affiliation with the late Shostakovich who entrusted the British premiere of his last three quartets to them. His fifteen quartets still belong to the core of their repertoire.

Shostakovich - Symphony nr. 2 'To October'

As I was so impressed by the Kitajenko/Gürzenich recordings of the Prokofiev symphonies, I was very curious to hear what this partnership might do with the Shostakovich cycle. JPC offered the 14 SACD box for less than 30 euros. A no brainer. Even if there was only a single symphony that had the qualities of the Prokofiev Sixth, it would be money well spent.

The set antedates the Prokofiev. All symphonies were taped between 2002 and 2004, either live in the Philharmonie or on location at the Studio Stolberger in Cologne. The recordings have been mastered as SACDs rather than the conventional CD format in case of the Prokofiev.

I don't have the intention to jump into a full Shostakovich cycle so only wanted to sample one of the shorter works. Inevitably one ends up with one of the strange, early works. It has been ages since I listened to the Second. Not a great work by any standards but now that I relistened to it it struck me how seminal it is for what was to follow. One can easily hear how the Fourth would soon spring from this musical imagination. There are also hints of the darker lyricism that would be so prominent in the Fifth and even Tenth Symphony.

I was, however, very unhappy to hear that sonically these recordings are no match for the Prokofiev set. Indeed, there is the impression of a slightly more finely contoured and finely grained sound (higher resolution) and there is an admirable sense of space. It is very easy to pinpoint all the desks in the orchestra. That in itself is very good and pleasing. But this seems to come at a price of a more generic, disembodied sound. Gone is the juicy and effortless luxuriance of the Prokofiev. Gone is also that sense of realism and 'being there' that puts you as a listener literally on edge. I am seeing the desks but I'm missing the faces! It's very disappointing. I'm also fearing for Kitajenko's readings now which tend to be somewhat more relaxed. With this kind of generic digital sound we might lose our interest much more rapidly ... I sampled some snippets from the live recordings too and it seems the problem persists across the whole set. Oh well, we'll see ...