by A decade ago that marked 40 years since the composer’s death, the Carducci quartet Schostakovich’s 15 string quartet played in a remarkable day-long marathon. This year is the 50th anniversary, but how do you follow that? For the Carduccis, the answer to the outside was: Programming the Schostakovich quartet, which they so often played over five concerts of the Russian composers’ students, and share their platform with newer, aspiring groups.
The Cardenkis opened this penultimate concert with Shostakovich’s string quartet No. 4, which runs from replacement, complaint-like folk friendliness to pseudo-klezmer-full gas-pseudo-klezmer. The former presented the exquisite mixed tone of the Cardenkis. The latter, the drama, which can be produced from rustic pizzikatos, the hard catch of bughaaren on the cord, the intensity of a cello melody from a stratospheric thumb position. But there was also an indication of business as usual – the first violin always dominant, energy that was always injected by the cello, and the general sound is always milder.
No such danger with the Elmore quartet, which Schostakovich’s string quartet No. 13 played, the wildness of the musicians is determined to achieve an influence. Vibrato was banished; The lively selection of sound colors came from the arch control solely. The results were sometimes unspeakable, sometimes brutal – the interjections of the first violins, which had been curved at one point in evil small wedges and Schostakovich’s wooden wooden tapes (bug against instrument). The audience absolutely fell silent.
After the interval, the Elmores returned with Elena Firsova’s string quartet No. 4 “Amoroso”, with the composer being present. The violins fired pizzicatos such as shots and counterpoint lines. But there were also moments of sudden beauty that were directed in the middle of the tumult.
No Shostakovich quartet is better known than his eighth, which is played here in Rudolf Barshai’s chamber arrangement of the Carducci, Kyan and Oculus Quartet as well as two of the Elmores and the double bass player Chris West. Such a line -up created a strange, occasionally shabby mix: quartet, finally like their own solid sound and do not easily merge into an ad hoc string orchestra. However, this remained in parts, its stabbed chords Grizzly, the repeated topic of nightmare, double bass shadow over the texture like a bruise.
• The Carducci Festival in Highhnam, Gloucestershire, is located on May 16 to 18
