Even the program had me thinking ‘Recording of
the Month’. Alexander Borodin’s string sextet is
an early, unfinished rarity ending on a slow movement that sounds
like Tchaikovsky in its melancholic good-tune simplicity. Alexander
Glazunov’s string quintet is my favorite Glazunov, a masterpiece
of Russian romanticism that overflows with ripe tunes, big emotions,
and sumptuous writing for the two cellos. Then comes Anton Arensky’s
second string quartet, written for violin, viola and two cellos,
an unforgettable eulogy for his late friend - Tchaikovsky. If
you’re missing even one of these extraordinary pieces,
order the disc now.
What, you’re still reading? Well then: the Nash Ensemble
give warm-hearted, lyrical readings of all these works, and
there are too many highlights to mention. The Borodin sextet
begins in a Mendelssohnian mode - he wrote it as a chemistry
student in Heidelberg, and confessed it was meant to please
the Germans. By the time the slow movement fades out to nothingness
you feel an emotional connection to the piece far greater than
would be expected of nine and a half minutes. The polish of
the writing, too, is more than one would expect from a ‘student’
work.
The Glazunov quintet is a work I’d rank alongside the
quartets of Borodin, Tchaikovsky, and Taneyev at the peak of
Russian romantic chamber music. It spins out an unending string
of expansive melodies, much like the second Borodin quartet,
but without being quite as unforgettable. It received a mellower,
more velvety performance on Naxos a few years ago at the hands
of the Fine Arts Quartet, which has a tonal splendor and luxuriousness
I find addictive, but I remember many critics saying that their
reading didn’t sound particularly Russian. The Nash Ensemble
(not Russian either) do have that idiomatic feel, finding
for the first movement’s gorgeous second tune a tempo
that both wallows and dances. Their pizzicato in the
scherzo (a total delight which predates similar movements by
Debussy and Ravel) are feather-light, and if the andante doesn’t
charm you then nothing will.
Then there’s the Arensky. Its obscurity is inexplicable.
It starts with a striking Russian religious hymn, which is used
as a motto theme to haunting effect throughout. The lighter
second theme, played here with such delicacy as dreams are made
of, must be one of Arensky’s greatest inspirations. The
second movement is a set of dazzling variations on a theme by
Tchaikovsky, who had died the previous year and whose presence
one senses Arensky missing very dearly. The finale contains
a fugue, which was obligatory for a certain school of Russian
composers (think Kalinnikov or Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony),
only this fugue, on “that” theme from Beethoven’s
Razumovsky quartets and Boris Godunov, is actually quite
enjoyable. It’s probably the composer’s masterwork
(see also the piano quintet), and it demands to be heard.
A few quartets (notably the Ying)
have recorded the Arensky using a standard string quartet, rather
than the one-violin/two-cello quartet Arensky called for, but
don’t bother with those. The dark, bittersweet tone of
the piece depends on its instrumentation. The only competitive
recordings are live discs from chamber music festivals in Santa
Fe, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas; don’t laugh: the latter
album features cellists Zuill Bailey and Lynn Harrell.
Despite my soft spot for the opulent Fine Arts Quartet, this
album has made me very happy. Two of my favorite underappreciated
chamber works, a delightful novelty from Borodin, and the ever-superb
playing of the Nash Ensemble, with everyone (it seems silly
to single one player out) delivering their solo lines and melodies
with satisfying warmth. The engineering leaves nothing to be
desired; the program, filling as it does three gaps in the average
listener’s library, adds up to more than the sum of its
parts. The cover design’s pretty terrific too. I could
go on, but what more do you need to hear?
Brian Reinhart
The Nash Ensemble 