The Pacifica Quartet has released its magnificent fourth and final instalment of string quartets from the Soviet era just in time for anyone looking for a stern antidote to the tinselly festivities at this time of year.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
As on the previous three albums, all released by Chicago’s Cedille Records, the Pacificas focus on Dmitri Shostakovich (who died in 1975). Here we have the final three, from the 1970s — Nos 13, 14 & 15.
The companion on the second CD is another late-in-life work: String Quartet No. 3, written 30 years ago by Alfred Schnittke (1919-1996).
Violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad and cellist Brandon Vamos play with an intensity and focus that seem superhuman at times. The sound has weight without ever feeling heavy. Even the slowest, quietest passages maintain a narrative thread. And regardless of the speed or dynamics, the overall balance is absolute.
The most impressive show of musicianship comes in the final, 15th quartet, written in E-flat minor, which is not an easy-to-tackle key for string players. All four members of the quartet have an equal role to play in the music’s gradual unfolding over six seamless movements. They have to build a 36-minute long arc out of the most transparent of material, and succeed by keeping our attention every second of the way.
The experience of listening to this piece, so poised in its perfect counterpoints and so poignant in its melancholy, is like a quiet catharsis, allowing the soul to start afresh in a season awash in unavoidable distractions.
In the CD booklet, note-writer Gerard McBurney makes a very interesting point, borrowed from the late Edward Said, about an artist’s late works that applies so well to late Shostakovich — as well as late Benjamin Britten:
The accepted notion is that age confers a spirit of reconciliation and serenity on late works, often expressed in terms of a miraculous transfiguration of reality…. But what of artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution, but as intransigence, difficulty and contradiction? What if age and ill health don’t produce serenity at all?
It’s a provocative thought for music cloaked in outward greyness but given a glowing heart through carefully constructed form and proportion and remarkable interpretations.
After Shostakovich’s sad but well-ordered musical world, the Schnittke quartet comes as a bit of a shock as it rolls back and forth in time between the composer’s 12-tone present and a variety of musical echoes from the past. I found the effect a bit obvious and perhaps a bit dated, compared to the seeming eternity suspended inside Shostakovich’s scores.
You can find all the details on this powerful and satisfying bout of musical seriousness here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
