Outcast
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
String Quartet No. 3 (1983)
Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937)
String Quartet No. 1 (1974)
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)
String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Opus 110 (1960)
Matangi Quartet
rec. 2021, Galaxy Studio, Mol, Belgium
MATANGI MUSIC MTM04 [69]
The Matangi string quartet is an ensemble which explores the boundaries of music from the classical to modern repertoire, as well as embracing pop, jazz, cabaret and dance. Since its foundation in 2000, they have emerged as one of the most distinctive groups from the Netherlands. They have appeared at major festivals such as the Delft Chamber Music Festival, Aix-en-Provence, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Festival de Carthage, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, North Sea Jazz and the Liberation Festival in Utrecht. They have their own annual (Un)heard Music Festival in The Hague at which they perform music far from the mainstream, including premieres of long neglected composers. They have recorded for Challenge Records International and Deutsche Grammophon; this is the fourth release on their own label Matangi Music.
In this latest release, the ensemble promotes the cause of artistic freedom and musical expression with their selection of three composers from the former Soviet Union: Schnittke, Shostakovich and the Ukrainian Silvestrov. As the Matangi write of these composers: ‘Described as “avant-garde” or “western”, they stuck their necks out with their work, risking their careers or – in the case of Dmitry Shostakovich under Stalin – even their personal freedom.’ Most notably, the Matangi Quartet are passionate about Valentin Silvestrov’s music and have established a unique bond both musically and personally with the Kiev-born composer (who now lives in Berlin, having emigrated in February 2022). The Matangi Quartet made him the Artist-in-Residence for their own (Un)heard Music Festival in 2017.
For much of his career, Alfred Schnittke wrote for the bottom drawer, making a career in writing music for the theatre or the cinema; some of the finest Soviet films of the 1960s-1980s are adorned by his startling film scores. It was only in the late 1970s and the years of Perestroika that his works began to be heard widely in the West as well as in his homeland. The opening Andante of the Schnittke Third Quartet is intriguing, with a baroque quotation before dissonance arrives with another ancient theme - which as played by the Matangi Quartet emerges sounding quite lovely. This passage is interrupted by a harrowing idea which becomes increasingly dramatic yet seems to end on an optimistic note. In the second movement Agitato, the music adopts a brisk tempo allowing beautiful harmonies to develop and a solid argument proceeds before the baroque idea is reprised, rising to a boundlessly intense passage with a quotation from Beethoven in an very histrionic sequence, while in the final movement, Pesante, the idiom becomes affected in an agonisingly slow sequence and a reprise of the previous idea arises, interrupted by emerging threatening ideas, with tentative plucking on the first violin of Maria-Paula Majoor, and heard intensely affected on the viola of Karsten Kleijer and cello of Arno van der Vuurst before the graceful close.
The Silvestrov piece opens quietly, in a beautiful passage of a searching theme on the first violin of Majoor, while a meditative idea appears prior to dissonance developing in the other instruments. Then there advance fierce arguments, with a powerfully aggressive passage from the violins of Majoor and Daniel Torrico Menacho, yet the first violin continues to express a brave courageous theme that is contrasted by the low strings, and becomes almost endlessly repetitive, before a questioning phrase arises, which is somewhat naïve and very simplistic in an innovative sequence yet becomes more enlightening, noble and more profound. A new theme opens very quietly, entering into a higher note on the first violin before it slowly disappears into nothingness.
The Shostakovich Eighth Quartet opens as if continuing the plot of the Silvestrov - at least in sustaining the disheartened mood, and there emerge superbly played, heart-breaking and the quotations of a Russian song heard against the reprise of the composer’s own motto of DSCH. Listening to this quartet after the other quartets somewhat lessens the effect of this masterpiece by Shostakovich. While I would not recommend this recording of Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet against several other notable releases - most conspicuously those by the Borodin Quartet, and the Beethoven Quartet – it certainly fits very well with the ensemble’s project of presenting music which from the Russian Slavic experience offer resistance to oppression.
This is a very fine new recording in which the most important work is the Silvestrov quartet, revealing him as among the finest composers of our time and surely deserving of greater presence in the music world. The booklet is in English and Dutch, providing excellent information on both the music itself and on the quartet’s history together with a separate insert exploring dissonance, dissidence and repression in Russia with quotations from Schnittke, Silvestrov and Shostakovich.
Gregor Tassie
Previous review:
Dominy Clements
