Over the course of
a decade, starting in 1968, the Taneyev
Quartet recorded the cycle of Shostakovich
Quartets. It’s been a long wait to have
them collated now but admirers, who
may have despaired of seeing them re-released
in this way, can rejoice. They were
last seen over a decade ago and for
completeness sake I should note those
issue numbers here – Nos. 1, 4 and 5
appeared on Melodiya SUCD 11-00308,
Nos. 3 and 9 on SU 11-00309, Nos. 6,
7, and 8 on SU 11-00311, Nos. 2 and
10 on SU 11-00310, Nos.11, 12 and 13
on SU 11-00312, and Nos. 14 and 15 on
SU 11-00313. The last two quartets were
licensed to, and issued by, CBS in the
USA. As a footnote to this I should
add that Praga brought out what is undoubtedly
a bogus "live" Fifth. It’s
almost certainly the studio Fifth recorded
here.
As many will know the
Taneyev premiered the Fifteenth Quartet
and their authority in this music, whilst
not as intimate of course as the Beethoven
or as widely acknowledged as the Borodin,
remains powerful and lasting. Certainly
their tonality is less homogenously
warm than the Borodin and as individualists
they are not quite the Beethoven’s equals
but their insights into this body of
work are unceasing, their tempos broadly
active and forward moving and their
conception completely convincing on
its own terms. Clearly this is one of
the greatest of all cycles of these
quartets and in many ways its claims
on the collector go beyond even that
recommendation. There are some very
occasional moments when the recording
fails to quite define the playing but
the engineering was otherwise excellent
and Aulos has surpassed itself with
the slipcase and two boxed sets contained
within.
The Taneyev tended
toward a lean sound, as those who possess
their recordings of the Miaskovsky cycle
will remember. One hears it immediately
in the opening of the First Quartet
where they cultivate a corporate tone
that is clearer and chillier than their
competitors. Their sense of drama is
not accompanied by inflated rhetoric
either; the folk drones of the Overture
of the Second are held in balance
and certainly not rushed off their feet
as can rather happen with the eponymous
Shostakovich Quartet performance on
Olympia. Yet individually the players
do cultivate a wide range of colours
and their bowing prowess and matching
of tone colours are formidable - sample
Vladimir Ovcharek’s difficult first
violin part, accomplished and engaged,
in the recitative in the Adagio. What
emerges time and again is their command
of the larger canvasses such as the
finale of the same quartet where they
bind the reflective and deciso
aspects with seamless surety. This was
clearly so when they embarked on the
cycle in 1968 because the Third,
the first to be taped, is equally strong
on the architectural elements where
in the third movement Allegro non troppo
they bring out the remorseless brittleness
at a fast tempo – very well articulated
and crystal clear intonation; those
skittering pizzicatos register decisively
as well. This corporate approach pays
dividends in such as the slow movement
of the Third where rivals tend to phrase
more heavily and emphatically; the more
ambiguous Taneyev response coupled with
their lighter bow weight means that
they coalesce the material with seamless
control; it is less contrastive and
blunt. And in the finale tension is
maintained even when the violins go
into the highest register.
The lyric climaxes
of the Fourth are briskly characterised
and its Andantino is expressive without
too much weight; the sense of release
and tension in the finale is kept up
to the end. Some may baulk here and
at some other points at the sense of
purpose they engender; this is not always
the same as fast tempi because it relates
equally to accents and the shaping of
phrases, though in the post-1950 quartets
they do take a determined view of the
music. The Fifth however isn’t
unduly fast but is full of clarity of
passagework and discipline; details
such as the cello lines’ arching phrases
are well brought out in the first movement
and the motor rhythms are accompanied
by big sonorous playing. The restrained
melancholy evolves naturally in the
Andante and the propulsion of the finale,
which acts as a scherzo-finale, is genuinely
intense. The Taneyev reserve a touching
intimacy for the slow movement of the
Sixth where its neo-baroque inflexions
are unforced; there’s neither wallowing
nor lingering here, either, and adherents
of the Borodin traversals and of the
Shostakovich will note that the Taneyev’s
relative directness of utterance contrasts
with more their overtly romanticised
playing. Whether tremolandi, pizzicati
or in unison, the Seventh – an
exceptionally compact and ambivalent
work – responds to the concentration
of loss and grief enshrined in the central
Lento – its stillness contrasting with
the succeeding searing finale.
The Eighth has
an inexorable sense of momentum though
the Taneyev stress the Allegretto less
dynamically than other quartets and
take the slow movement at a fast Largo.
For all their relative speed in some
of the quartets what is never audible
is any sense of breathless phrasing,
or unnecessarily harried playing; on
the contrary the tensile dynamics of
the Eighth’s second movement contrast
fully with the intensely sonorous slow
movement. Daringly terraced dynamic
shading marks out the slow movement
of the Ninth as does a strongly
etched succeeding Allegretto; the contrasts
of light and heavier bowing are optimum
here whilst the slow movement avoids
all sense of lingering. The Tenth
is a work that especially suits the
Taneyev’s rather brittle and edgy corporate
sound; tension is magnified by tremendous
subtleties of inflexion and by a sure
sense of stylistic probity and in the
slow movement they do open out rather
more than elsewhere to span its gravity
of utterance.
The Eleventh is
notable for the tonal matching between
Ovcharek and second violinist Grigori
Lutsky. The sparseness of texture they
cultivate and their acute playing are
both laudatory as are the brittle outbursts
in the short first Adagio and the greater
cultivated weight in the second. One
feels that they have a panoramic view
of the schema of the opening movement
of the Twelfth. Nothing is allowed
to sag, episodes are prepared with scrupulous
intelligence and imagination and the
gradual unveiling of the beauties that
end the movement are genuinely moving.
No less so the vivid colours of the
Allegretto and the range of expressive
devices employed to put across this
multi-partite movement, which includes
slow movement and scherzo. The slower
material is rightly reverential and
muted and the ending in their hands
seems affirmative. The grim Thirteenth,
that single movement quarter of an hour
span, nevertheless moves relentlessly
and remorselessly forward. A number
of competitors routinely take as much
as two or three minutes longer than
the Taneyev (as does the Shostakovich
for example) though few match it in
grip or bite. Nor do many grasp the
elation and despair embedded in the
Fourteenth with as much directness.
The metrical flexibility and tonal subtlety
here are highly distinguished. Note
especially the playing of the pizzicato
passages and the unceasingly beautiful
line of the first violin in the Adagio
and the Bachian flourishes and recurring
pizzicato reminiscences in the Allegretto
finale. There’s something Janačék-like
about the playing and the unleashing
of the radiant ending. The final quartet,
the Fifteenth, was the
one premiered by these forces after
Sergei Shirinsky of the Beethoven Quartet
had died following a rehearsal of it.
As a result their performance carries
an especial charge and we can hear in
the jagged control of the second movement
Adagio how powerfully controlled, and
yet expressive, is the melancholia they
evoke. In their hands the concluding
Epilogue-Adagio has an unbowed and determined
forward motion that carries all before
it.
This is an essential
set for admirers of the Shostakovich
quartets. The fact that the musicians
knew him and premiered the last quartet
is of considerable importance, of course,
but beyond that is the authoritative
and dynamic and highly tensile grip
the Taneyev exert throughout all these
works. The six CDs are split into two
box sets and housed in a sturdy case.
The notes are perfectly adequate though
not voluminous.
Jonathan Woolf
Taneyev Quartet 
