This
CD is part of a series of DG issues celebrating the 100th anniversary
of Shostakovich’s birth. The inside back has four cover designs
for this project, including the present Hagen Quartett issue
with its clever and distinctive ‘DSCH’ in Russian red and
white. It’s probably just a mock-up, but DG historians and
stamp collectors can argue over why the Bernstein/Shostakovich
Symphonies 6 and 9 has a red label which, under a picture
of Bernstein reads what looks like, ‘A tribute to one of
history’s acclaimed Bach interpreters. Released for the first
time on the occasion of Richter’s 100th birthday
in 2006.’
Enough
obtuse irrelevancy. Readers wish to know if this new Hagen
Quartett recording is up to their usual phenomenal standard,
and I can say straightaway that it is. Whatever the chosen
repertoire, they are almost always right there at the ‘unsurpassed’ level,
and with the DG engineers holding their playing under an
intense magnifying glass they have to be. These recordings
are sensibly placed in a fairly resonant acoustic, but have
a closeness of microphone placement so that every nuance
and detail is open and exposed – the acoustic is there, but
only as a faint background allowing the instruments to blend
where necessary. With the volume at an appropriate level
you can close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting right
between Lukas and Clemens, with Rainer and Veronika not far
from the end of your nose. This is not to say that the whole
thing is an overly spot-lit or uncomfortable experience;
just that you can feel the wood at work, and almost see the
resin floating in gentle motes or flying from the strings
as they resonate.
With
a number of very decent versions of these quartets floating
around these days, I feel it’s most helpful to have a single
point of reference, and each time I’ve been confronted with
a new Shostakovich recording it’s been the Fitzwilliam Quartet’s
1970s set to which I’ve turned. That’s not to say that other
recordings have not made improvements, but having dealt with
the superlatives on that front it’s the directness to Shostakovich’s
voice and intention that I value with the Fitzwilliams. They
did after all spend time studying the works with the man
himself, and the sheer grit and musicality of their versions
I have found to be among the hardest to beat.
The
Hagen’s opening to the 3rd quartet is colourful
and witty, with extra little touches of rubato here and there,
and the contrasts between the jauntily whistling first violin
and the impassioned moments of tutti playing carefully
weighed and highly effective. Just a shade quicker, the Fitzwilliam
Quartet is a tad more urgent, with less overt wit built in
to their generally darker overall view on the score. They
sound just a bit more Russian, if you know what I
mean, more earthy. You get every ounce of refinement and
subtlety with the Hagens, but they dig deeper in a different
way, teasing your mind rather than poking at the soft parts
of your body with a dirty mop. The uncompromising viola notes
set the scene for the opening of the second Moderato con
moto, and here the Fitzwilliam Quartet is a little slower,
emphasising that pesante heaviness. The new DG recording
reveals the counterpoint and character of each voice in this
dramatic opening, and the Hagens are assertive in their glissandi,
the solo violin in the second section floating over a super-staccato, spiccato accompaniment.
Listening deeper into this new recording, and I find myself
greatly in admiration in the way this quartet has made this
music distinctly their own, without imposing unidiomatic
strangeness or compromising with the sheer energy and drama
which spring from every page of Shostakovich’s quartets.
With the third Allegro non troppo movement they really
lay into the pizzicato rhythms and rollicking ping-pong hockets:
the still melancholy of the Adagio drops thereafter
like a stone, sinking slowly into the deepest of cold, lonely
lakes. The build-up in the final Moderato is inexorable,
with a plangent Jewish-sounding solo violin singing over
lightly inflected accompaniments or conversing with the cello – I
love this storytelling ability on the new recording, it adds
so many new dimensions.
The
seventh quartet was written in memory of Shostakovich’s first
wife Nina, and the first violin’s pizzicati in the
first movement are like darts of pain which penetrate the
heart – at least, that’s the way they sound to me in this
new recording. Referring back to Fitzwilliam territory and
again they are swifter and more urgent in this opening Allegretto;
but with just an ounce, sorry, gram of extra restraint in
the tempo the Hagens lay bare the inner workings and dual
sense of a hidden, but otherwise naked emotion being expressed.
The sparseness of the second movement holds the clue to this
struggle with abstract language. For a composer it can be
almost too easy to ‘write’ sadness, longing and regret. Shostakovich
often sought his solutions in sparely precise simplicity
and emptiness – emotion by association rather than through
any kind of direct outpouring. The Hagen’s reading of the
fugal Allegro is I think the most insanely wild I
think I have ever heard, but it works wonderfully – a big
wow!
The
eighth quartet was only written four months later than the
seventh, and was famously completed in just three days. This
is the one which uses Shostakovich’s own musical signature, ‘DSCH’ (D,
E flat, C and B natural), and with his own description of
it as a ‘requiem to himself’ there are also plenty of references
to earlier works. I’ve heard commentators moaning about the
8th quartet, but you can’t blame a piece of music
any more than you can blame the Mona Lisa for being over-exposed.
I doubt we would hear any complaints if this where Shostakovich’s only string
quartet. This is, like Prokofiev’s 7th piano sonata,
a war piece. Written in Dresden in 1960, only 15 years after
the city was consumed by bombs and flames, the lingering
wreckage seems to have crept into Shostakovich’s soul and
re-awakened his experiences during the siege of Leningrad.
It is this sense of anguish, anger and desolation which the
Hagen Quartett wring from the notes on the page. Like no
other performance on record that I know, my tear ducts were
constantly being roused by the sense of rage and injustice ‘to
the memory of the victims of war.’ I may be a sentimental
old fool, but living on the European mainland makes you realise
sometimes how lucky we are that, by a quirk of temporal fate,
we do not live at a time when a heavy knock at the
door could mean anything more than an impatient postman,
or that approaching explosions are just the side effect of
a liberal attitude to fireworks around new year. When you
hear the stories of how people suffered – from the very people
who lived through that war, it is only such music as this
which really manages to express these emotions in music.
I am grateful to the Hagen Quartett that their musical alchemy
manages to distil this powerful human imagery into such a
beautifully recorded performance.
Dominy Clements
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Hagen Quartett:
Lukas Hagen (1st violin); Rainer
Schmidt (2nd violin); Veronika Hagen (viola);
Clemens Hagen (cello) 
