Of the two composers most closely associated with the Stalinist era
in Russia, it is the string quartets of Shostakovich which have entered the
international repertory rather than those of Prokofiev. Most of
Shostakovich’s quartets were written after Stalin’s death, while
Prokofiev had the great misfortune to time his death to coincide with that
of the dictator. His only two quartets, one written before his return to the
Soviet Union and the second whilst evacuated away from the war zone during
the Great Patriotic War ten years later, have made nothing like the same
impact as those of Shostakovich. There are only two other integral
recordings in the current catalogue.
It has become traditional to contrast the music which Prokofiev
wrote in the West before 1933 during his
enfant terrible phase with
the works he wrote after his return to Russia in the ‘social
realist’ style. In fact these two quartets show a decided similarity
of idiom. By the time he came to write the
First Quartet in 1931
Prokofiev had already moved a good distance away from his early modernist
style and much of the music here already eerily anticipates both the manner
and the music of his Soviet-era ballet
Romeo and Juliet.
There
are pre-echoes of
Tybalt’s death, the music anticipating
Juliet’s ‘suicide’ and even of some of the more anguished
love music. It is clear that when Prokofiev came to write the ballet he
recalled with affection some of the music he had written for the quartet
four years earlier. The
Second Quartet makes use of traditional folk
melodies from the North Caucasian region to which Prokofiev was evacuated,
but his treatment of the themes harks back to his earlier
Scythian
Suite in its almost Bartókian rhythmic emphasis. Neither work can
be at all easy to play, but the Quartetto Energie Nova make light of all
difficulties and attack both works with eagerness and vivacity as well as
impeccable tuning. They are ideally recorded in a close - but not too close
- acoustic.
Given such energetic playing, comparisons with other sets of the
quartets would be invidious, so choice will depend on the coupling. All
three recordings which give us both quartets recognise that in combination
they make short measure, and all three solve the matter of fill-ups in
different ways. The Aurora String Quartet on Naxos couple the two quartets
with the
Cello Sonata; the Coull String Quartet on Hyperion give us
the chamber version of the
Overture on Hebrew themes. Here the
Quartetto Energie Nova give us a unique recording of the piano
Visions
fugitives in an arrangement for string quartet by Sergei Simonov. The
booklet notes give us regrettably little detail regarding this arrangement,
but it works surprisingly well, with the often cheeky piano writing
translating well to the differently chirpy sounds of the string quartet. The
best choice of coupling was the
String Quintet supplied by the
Russian Quartet’s recording for Arte Nova, but that disc is no longer
available although it can still be found online and the performances are
considerably rougher.
Nonetheless this Quartetto Energie Nova must earn the highest recommendation
for giving us a chance to hear both Prokofiev quartets in such excellently
turned performances. I have not heard either of its currently available
competitors, but they cannot possibly be any better than this.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
