Two classic performances,
one with the composer’s imprimatur as executant. The wartime
Piano Quintet is a fascinating work written in five movements
that bears some similarity with Shostakovich’s Piano Trio. Completed
in 1944 it was first performed by Gilels and the Quartet of
the Bolshoi Theatre. The melancholy lyricism of the first movement
fuses with jagged march themes which in turn become more and
more garrulous and menacing. By the Allegretto increasing motor
rhythms and oily lines for solo strings and heavy rhythmic attacks
– strong independent piano part, powerful unison strings – bring
hints of baroque procedure and a grave conclusion. It’s a quintet
that really covers all emotive states, from the almost manic
first violin of the Presto to the stern passacaglia-like fourth
movement Largo. Here the long, and limpidly sung piano is flecked
with great gravity, a memorable movement. To my ears the finale
has a weird Scotch snap to it – a scotch reel fugato if one
can imagine it in the context of a Weinberg quintet and there
are also moments of almost hallucinatory boogie; I couldn’t
quite believe it. The ghostly mists gradually descend though
and we end with fugitive and ambiguous quiet. It’s an unsettling
work, kaleidoscopic, deeply rooted in Shostakovich of course
but still sounding intensely personal.
Coupled with it is the 1959 Eighth Quartet.
Once more the tugs of meditative control and melancholy drift
are powerful poles around which the emotive motor turns. But
the urgent expressivity is contrasted in the lighter moments
with folkloric dance and drive and a return to the newly mobile
material, which is now laced with pizzicati. It maybe in sonata
form but its one movement multi-partite fifteen-minute span
is tremendously impressive as a cohesive statement. There is
real variety - of mood, texture, rhythm, colour – and its performance
here by its dedicatees, the Borodin Quartet - sounds well nigh
definitive.
Melodiya’s presentation is attractive and
there are multi-lingual notes. There’s some audible tape hiss
at moments in the 1963 recording of the Quintet though the earlier
1961 Quartet fares better in this respect. In any case it’s
a very minor question and won’t at all impede your listening.
These are two big, powerful and comprehensively impressive musical
statements.
Jonathan Woolf
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Borodin Quartet
