Jurgis KARNAVIČIUS (1884-1941)
String Quartet No 3 (1922) [33:13]
String Quartet No 4 (1925) [28:43]
Vilnius String Quartet
rec. November 2020, Lithuanian National Philharmonic
ONDINE ODE1387-2 [62:02]
The first volume of the cycle of four string quartets by this major figure in Lithuanian music is on Ondine ODE1351-2 (review). In that review you can read a little more about Karnavičius, a student of Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Maximilian Steinberg.
The Third Quartet was composed in 1922 and dedicated to the memory of Antonio Stradivari though it wasn’t published until 1969. Performances have been almost non-existent since its premiere, until the Vilnius Quartet recorded it in 2020. There’s a calmness and fluidity about the work, which is couched in Late Romanticism and Impressionism, that makes it appealing. Those Debussian hues are accompanied by eloquent chromaticism, though the central fast movement seems to belong to an altogether airier Classical vein. The finale swings back and forth between fast and slow material, evoking the gentle chromaticism of the opening Andante but ending in an optimistically up-tempo way. It’s not clear that this is much of a technical or expressive advance on the Second Quartet written five years earlier, but it shares its confidence in structural terms.
The final quartet followed in 1925. It, too, is in three movements, like the Third, but as to whether I would characterise its opening movement, as the notes do, as ‘gloomily impetuous’ is rather open to doubt. At least it doesn’t sound so in this expert performance. True, it has polyphonic density but in a quiveringly fluid way, and there are plenty of incidents to maintain thematic and rhythmic interest. But of gloom I don’t hear very much. There’s an appropriate level of veiled melancholy in the Andante where quiet reflectiveness, and a sense of haunting Tristanesque ardour, do suffuse the music from time to time but perhaps more characteristic of Karnavičius is the finale where he indulges his affection for chopping up his narrative like a musical woodsman. Little motifs are projected and shuffled and though Beata Baublinskienė in her notes may well be right when suggesting that a classical fourth movement might have been appropriate, I agree that we must accept the composer’s frugality on the matter.
The Vilnius String Quartet sets a standard in these première recordings that will be hard to emulate. Their sensitivity to balance and sonority is unfailingly fine, their tonal qualities are admirable, and they’ve been beautifully recorded. I can’t hide behind the critical curtain of objective detachment; I did find the cycle of quartets somewhat lacking in a truly personal stamp. But this is an important foundational body of Lithuanian chamber music and it’s important that one acknowledges the many excellent things about this, and the previous disc.
Jonathan Woolf
