Shostakovich's op.57 has come a long way with me. First taped from medium wave through a microphone in the 1970's, bought on LP in the 1980's and heard intermittently on the radio since, it is one of the few opus numbers I know, having once known a few but not as many as Robin Ray.It is difficult to overestimate Shostakovich's achievement, given his circumstances, the vast range of his output, the captivating music in so many genres and I'm betting without the symphonies which are monumental and perhaps his greatest work but, for the time being at least, I can't manage a whole one at once.
Although the String Quartet is given top billing here, it wasn't the reason for buying the disc. It was Record Review's 'Disc of the Week' last Saturday, it was the quintet they played, it immediately became essential and is first on the shortlist for my Disc of the Year.
I had been struck by its quietness. There is immense sensitivity in the playing, the wintry desolation and most of all the restraint with which the quintet ends. Of course there is light and shade, energy and emptiness but one is never far away from a feeling in Shostakovich of being 'at odds' with something. He had every reason to be that but it is as much a part of his process as it is a biographical statement. One is aware of layers of pastiche, irony, any amount of allusion or meaning, only really uncertain about how much could be read into it. And yet he explains the piano part in the quintet as having been written so that he could go on tour to play it and see the world rather than be left at home. But all the time one is held by some mystery and bleak soulfulness.
The third quartet is another piece I became well acquainted with as a teenager taking a year out from pop music, which was regarded by such a serious 15 year old as trivial and so I spent that time with Beethoven and Shostakovich, mainly.
If the quintet is abstract and atmospheric, the Quartet no. 3 is quite clealy about something. Written in 1946, it is about the aftermath of World War 2. The viola riff in the moderato is described in the notes here as having 'militaristic obstinacy', a phrase presumably rendered in translation from the original German. For me it has always provided a graphic account of a fighter plane shot out of the sky on its downward spiral. That image is never going to go away after more than 40 years and Dmitri's no longer here to confirm or deny it, or be cagily evasive on the subject.
Familiarity with music like this won't ever breed contempt, one only has to avoid thinking you know it and be open to the more it still has to offer. It can't be downgraded to background music in the way that even Mozart, Bach and Handel can be if you must. If it begins jaunty but haunted, the war is evoked in the second movement, the shifting gusto and disturbance of the third leads us to post-war ruin in the fourth and, if we insist on being programmatic, perhaps there is some rebuilding being solemnly contemplated in the last before a gentle ending.
I know he can do loud to great effect in the symphonies and when required in Lady Macbeth of Mtensk but quiet he does even better.
This new recording will have to be considered with the Fitzwilliam Quartet's in the seminal box set of them all. That should have been my answer in the Culture Fix questionnaire below but I thought I was expected to say The Wire or Breaking Bad and that wasn't possible. I wouldn't dare compare the Fitzwilliams and the Belcea but I'm sure this is every bit as sensational as the widely-recognized top interpretation.
Having played this through a second time last night, I had intended to give something else another listen. It is still not a week since the release of the first disc and download that I am privileged to have a songwriting credit on and, having hit no. 117 in the Amazon Album Download chart it is now back down among the also-rans of the list, so fleeting has stardom become. But it seems inappropriate to play anything else after this. It's not that it is so final and not quite that nothing else is worthy but one wants to be left with the feeling it leaves you with. It has great length and complexity in the aftertaste. Nominate me for a bad writing prize for that if you want but I'm on full-time irony duty and so like to think I can say such things when necessary.
You need to get this disc, assuming you've read this far for having an interest in Shostakovich or C20th music. I know there is Sibelius. I'd put up Poulenc against, or at least alongside, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Elgar, Rachmannov and the litany of luminaries from the C20th but none of them are Dmitri Shostakovich. Like anything truly worth its while, he continues to impress and is always worthwhile. Perhaps there is a trick to it but there are some things that one never gets to the bottom of, that are never exhausted. These are two such pieces. .