Half-Cycle of Shostakovich Quartets
Last year's celebration of the 100th birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich, on September 25, fizzled out somewhat here in Washington. This week, dedicated listeners had the chance to take their fill of the Russian composer's music. After a thundering concert performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by the Kirov Opera on Sunday, it was the Emerson Quartet who brought the early half of their complete cycle of Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets, played to great acclaim in London and other places (available in a live recording made at the Aspen Music Festival several years ago). On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening in the sold-out Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, the most attentive audience in recent Washington history heard the first eight string quartets and the piano quintet. With coughing and other distracting noise kept to a striking minimum, one had the feeling of being in the company of serious listeners. A man in front of me cupped his hand to his ear to focus on the quartet's sound if there was too much rustling of programs near him.
The Emerson's violist, Lawrence Dutton, had a shoulder surgery in July, requiring this Shostakovich cycle to be delayed from its originally scheduled time last October, as well as some creative reconfiguring of other scheduled concerts. Back in the saddle, Dutton seemed in good form, at one point stretching his fingers mid-movement, as if he had some minor discomfort, but nothing serious. Dutton's solo at the opening of the second movement of the "Springtime" quartet (no. 1, op. 49), the first offering on Monday night, was an effectively melancholy lament. That quartet is a lovely wisp of a thing, much of it played quietly. The Emersons' performance was a little rough and self-suffocated, but the group went on to give superb readings of the meatier no. 7 (op. 108), with its eerie duets in the first two movements and the raucous, harried third movement. That first concert concluded with no. 5 (op. 92), which opened with a driven, folksy rendition of the moto perpetuo first movement. Cellist David Finckel played the gorgeous cello solo in the Andante with consummate lyricism.
Sometimes the rustic side of Shostakovich's folk-inspired writing turns a little too much toward Turkey in the Straw, to draw an American parallel, as in the buoyant first movement of no. 2 (op. 68), which opened the Tuesday concert. The best performances that evening came on no. 4 (op. 83), an overtly emotional work, bordering on but never reaching the saccharine quality of Rachmaninov. On Tuesday evening, Eugene Drucker sat as first violin -- or rather stood, since the Emersons, except for cellist Finckel, play standing -- and he gave an exceptional reading of the main theme of this quartet's slow movement. The evening closed with no. 8 (op. 110), a favorite of this reviewer (heard from the Jerusalem Quartet last April), which is a weighty, autobiographical work infused with the musical theme Shostakovich created for himself from the letters DSCH, which work out in solfège to D, E-flat, C, B-natural. As a personal response to the suffering of the city of Dresden during World War II, no. 8 is a terrifying work of edgy rawness, and the Emersons captured that quality superbly, not least in the brutal sound of gunshots evoked in the fourth movement.
Photo of the Emerson Quartet by Mitch Jenkins
On Wednesday evening Philip Setzer played first violin, and whether for that reason or something else, the group's playing seemed of a higher caliber. The sunshine atmosphere of the bright, Hadynesque no. 6 is often attributed to its coincidence with the occasion of Shostakovich's second marriage in 1955 -- or is it a sardonic attack on bourgeois morality? Like so much of Shostakovich, one could support either interpretation, but the Rimsky-Korsakov turns of the second movement were exaggerated in a slightly robotic way by the Emersons. As each movement's loose ends are tied up in a nice major-chord cadence, the air of cynicism is reinforced.
This tongue-in-cheek performance was surpassed by perhaps the best work of this mini-cycle, on no. 3, a more substantial work whose subject matter -- war, emotional ambivalence, anxiety -- suited Shostakovich best. When the Belcea Quartet played no. 3 last year, its themes of innocence before cataclysm and bewildered shock afterward resonated with our own time, and the effect was the same here. The vicious third movement, subtitled by the composer "The forces of war unleashed," was an unrelenting assault that left the audience shell-shocked. This set up the light, airy rendition of the fifth movement, with its elegiac, resigned conclusion ("The eternal question: Why? and for what?").
After eight string quartets, it was a welcome change for the ears to hear Shostakovich's chamber music jewel, the G minor piano quintet (op. 57), which concluded the Wednesday concert. The Emersons all got to sit down at last, so as not to block our view of the pianist, Joseph Kalichstein, who also happens to be artistic director of the Fortas Chamber Music series at the Kennedy Center. It is one of Shostakovich's relatively rare flirtations with outright neoclassicism, especially in the gorgeous fourth movement, which could be out of a film score, a love song ("Intermezzo") below the bedroom window of a Mantuan lady. The combination with Kalichstein was not ideal, not least because of a tendency toward hammer-like attack -- perhaps shutting the piano's lid would have been a good idea. Shostakovich wrote the piano part for himself to play, with the Beethoven Quartet in 1940, and some of its significant challenges, in the rollicking third movement, evaded Kalichstein's right hand at times. Still, this was an exciting performance, certainly not short on fullness of sound, that concluded a most welcome week devoted to the music of Shostakovich.
The next interesting concert in the Fortas Chamber Music series at the Terrace Theater features the Nash Ensemble of London in a Shakespeare-themed program with mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby, on March 20.