SHOSTAKOVICH: String Quartets No. 5; No. 7 & No. 9 – Mandelring Quartet – Audite Multichannel SACD 92.528, 67:54 **** [Distr. by Albany]:
It seems as though the time of Shostakovich has arrived. He has always been popular to a certain extent—no doubt assisted by the generation of band students exposed to myriad arrangements of his music—but that popularity was always limited to a few pieces. Now, with umpteen issues of the symphonies, his piano work getting a second wind, songs, choral works, you name it, we are getting a more in-depth look at this mysterious composer who seemed to write music with a double meaning in order to protect himself and those in his circle.
Growing up I was always cognizant of the fact that as far as string quartets were concerned, what was started by Haydn and perfected by Beethoven found its completion in the works of Bela Bartok. That composer’s stature has not diminished of course, but now we are seeing an increased interest in the 15 quartets of the Russian composer, and perhaps it has taken a number of years of post-Soviet angst to finally hear these works in a more neutral setting divorced from their totalitarian-colored origins.
The notes to this excellently-recorded release (stunning surround sound with ambient back-speaker channeling) overdo the case for Shostakovich employing Beethovenian techniques in these particular works, each razor-sharp and full of incisive witticisms that only Shostakovich was capable of. The classically constructed Fifth, tragically sorrowful Seventh, and the pacifistic Ninth, which the composer intended as a “children’s quartet”, though its length might belie that assertion as the music is anything but simple, are three of the most accessible works in the cycle, at least superficially. Beethoven of course exposed his ultimate compositional techniques in his quartets though they can hardly be considered to be “intimate” emotionally. Shostakovich, who only turned seriously to quartet writing after WWII, lets us deep inside his psyche in these works, originally intended as a cycle of 24 quartets in each key, though he did not live long enough to accomplish this.
This is the third issue in the Mandelring’s cycle, and a worthy one it is, still stiffed with excellent rivals like the Emerson, but with the added advantage of the best sound these pieces have had to date. I look forward to the completion of what will prove to be a landmark issue.
— Steven Ritter
