2 in D Major; Serenata alla Spagnola; TCHAIKOVSKY: Andante cantabile,
from Op. 11; RACHMANINOV: Romance; SCHUBERT: Quartettsatz in C Minor,
D. 703; WEBERN: Langsamer Satz
Onyx 4002 66:41 ****:
Small world, isn’t it? I had just reviewed the BBC Legends
Borodin Quartet appearances at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival (BBCL 4063)
when my editor John Sunier sent me this lovely disc, which once more
includes the D Major Quartet by their esteemed namesake, a performance
rife with lavish affection and tendresse. The melodic lines are
noticeably softer in this 2004 realization than they were 40 years ago;
perhaps we are hearing the mellowness of their principal cellist
Valentin Berlinsky, now in his 80th year. But Ruben Aharonian’s first
violin, too, has responded in a more songful, less literalist manner,
as has Igor Naidin’s antiphonal viola in the Allegro moderato interior
voice conversations. The intonation for the finale is as razor-sharp as
the middle movements are vocally opulent. Refined, breathed phrasing,
flexibility of ensemble, tonal variety; all these qualities
converge–along with years of accumulated experience and grand sympathy
for the works they perform–to make the Borodin D Major a precious
moment of chamber music. The very opening of the Scherzo blew me
away for sheer beauty of sound. The little Spanish Serenade is a plucky
affair in several senses.
The real find in this tribute CD is the 1905 Slow Movement of Anton
Webern, in which the future minimalist exploits the romantic syntax he
imbibed via early Schoenberg and Wagner, the post-Tristan language we
hear in the tone poem In Sommerwind, with tiny hints at Richard
Strauss’s valedictory Metamorphosen. The Rachmaninov Romance (1890) is
a student work the Borodin Quartet has championed – along with its
companion piece, the Scherzo, since 1951. It is an extended cantilena
in the Italian manner, with hints of our friend Tchaikovsky, whose own
Andante cantabile evokes enough majesty to recall that Tolstoy wept
when he attended its premier. The Schubert C Minor Quartet-Movement
occupies its own dark and exotic world, a brief masterpiece which hints
at aspects of the composer’s psyche which had yet to be plumbed before
his untimely demise left the 41 bars of the A-flat Andante unfinished.
–Gary Lemco