Another
laurel goes to Northern Flowers and the
Boris
Tchaikovsky Society. The complete cycle
of numbered quartets spans the whole creative lifetime
bar the last two decades. There are some unnumbered student
works outside the main canon but these have been disclaimed
by the composer. We need not be preoccupied by them.
The
First dates
from the same year as the
Sinfonietta. It is a work
of saturated singing lines - of delight in melody. This
is often presented in canon form yet never succumbs to
stultifying academicism. The sound-world recalls an updated
hybrid of the Sibelius
Voces Intimae and Smetana
First - yet more translucent than either. Contrast the
Second which
was written a year before the Piano Quintet (just reissued
on Forum-Regis). This four movement work encompasses a
more subdued world against which melody sings out as a
still small voice confident in its capacity to transform.
The
allegro presents as a sinister night-march -
slightly Britten-like. The
Largo screws up the tension
even tighter and this time the little voice seems to present
no balm or escape.
The
Third has
its origins in the score for the film
While The Front
is Defensive. It's a six movement work which is by
turns tense and confidingly pattering. It is full of acrid
rasping attack, murmurous and invocatory episodes, chilly,
expectant and consolatory. A chill of despair adds a degree
of equivocation.
The
Fourth returns
to the three movement floor-plan of the First from almost
twenty years before. This is a sometimes stern aggressive
work yet with healing in the wings of the middle
andante. The
final
andante is severe and offers little warmth
to the needy heart. Instead there is a lyrical and quiet
fragility that offers a low key but touching apotheosis.
The last
two quartets are each in a single 14 minute movement. Like
their two predecessors they are dedicated to the Prokofiev
Quartet with whom Tchaikovsky recorded the Piano Quintet
of 1962 (Forum-Regis). The
Fifth returns to the
lyrical pole addressed by the First Quartet. it again has
a slender fragility - which we know from the end of the
Fourth - presented above a trudging ostinato. The
Sixth is
packed with invention - some of it acrid, angular and high
tensile. Even so Tchaikovsky can never abdicate the singing
voice that forms part of the warp and weft of his creative
persona.
These are
great works of the last century and largely unknown. They
will reward your effort and investment. Given their head
they will form part of the treasury of music that embraces
your emotions and forms the backdrop to your life. Wonderful
performances, not too breathy and pellucidly recorded.
Rob Barnett
see also the index
of all Boris Tchaikovsky reviews on Musicweb International
Ilya Ioff
(violin); Elena Raskova (violin); Lydia Kovalenko (viola);
Alexey Massarsky (cello) 
