Shostakovich
Quartet Cycle II: Emerson String Quartet, QEH, Monday 6.3 2006 (CC)
It's always good to welcome the Emersons to the South
Bank, and good to have the opportunity to hear them
live in the works of Shostakovich, a composer with
whose music they won a 2000 Gramophone Award.
David Fanning's introduction
to this particular series draws attention to the Emerson
Quartet's 'setting new standards in streamlined precision'.
Indeed. And perhaps that's part of the problem. A
couple of technical slips aside, there was a huge
amount of prowess to admire in this concert of Quartets
Nos. 4-6 (played in the order 4-6-5). But the technical
wizardry came at a soul-cost, as time and time again
I found myself regretting that their squeaky-clean
Americanism precludes a Soviet-style tonal and expressive
depth. This 'cleanness' was most obviously encountered
in their layout – three members stand, something that
detracts from the intimacy that is so much a vital
part of the experience of these pieces. In essence,
what it says is that they are projecting out to us,
the audience, instead of drawing us in.
The Fourth Quartet (1949)
found the 1st/2nd violin set-up
as Drucker/Setzer - they regularly swap around and
who was playing what was even itemised in the programme.
The curious sterility of the Fourth's performance
hardly boded well, particularly the first movement
(the Andantino slow movement did at least progress
towards an emotion identifiable as desolation). Yet
the cello playing by David Finckel in the 'second
' allegretto' (the third movement – three out of four
movements have Shostakovich's favourite tempo indication!)
was only fairly characterful and I have heard much
better from him than this. And the spikiness of the
themes seemed somehow in a no-man's land, unable to
speak truthfully as Shostakovichian.
The
Sixth Quartet, Op. 101 (1956, so some seven yars after
the Fourth, and also post-Tenth Symphony) fared better,
its faux-naiveté and bitter-sweet tinges well drawn
– perhaps because Setzer evinced more character than
Drucker. Whatever the differences between the two
violinists, there was distinctly more passion to this
reading, and the whispered utterances of the Lento
were undeniably impressive.
Post-interval
came the Fifth Quartet, Op. 92 (1952). Fanning's note
is fascinating in its description of an 'Ustvolskaya
theme' (from her 1949 Trio for clarinet, violin and
piano), as it is in his spot-on description of the
ultimate (and deliberate) irreconcilability of Shostakovich's
materials. The Emersons impressed most in the expansive
and mainly restful Andante middle movement, although
the tremendous stillness of the quartet's ultimate
close also worked. The major worry was the uninvolved
first movement and the performance's (to be farnk)
lack of structural integrity. The long crescendo of
tension as well as dynamic failed to make its effect
for this very reason – lack of long-range thought.
Expert but unconvincing Shostakovich.
