Review: Shostakovich on their minds
Print version 
Mozart: String Quartet #4 K.458
Beethoven: String Quartet #6
Shostakovich: String Quartet #8
Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater String Quartet
The Red Hall, Opera
Oct. 29, 19:00
In one of their infrequent appearances of late, the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater String Quartet last week presented three perennial chamber music favorites. The Mozart (mistakenly advertised as #4 in E minor; it was actually #17 “Hunt” in B flat major, the confusion arising probably because it is the fourth in a set of six pieces) is the most popular of his Haydn quartets, collectively generally considered the pinnacle of string quartet writing; while Beethoven’s youthful #6 retains the lightness and poise of the earlier classical tradition. Shostakovich’s 8th, too, is his most popular quartet, performed more than his other fourteen put together – and one of the few chamber pieces composed after the Second World War that can be said to be popular at all.
It rapidly became evident that the performers, under Giorgi Khandrava’s energetic leadership, had the Shostakovich in mind even as they played their way through the Mozart and Beethoven. Like the story of the Berlin Philharmonic, rehearsing under a guest conductor, suddenly reverting to Furtwangler’s style as the great man himself entered the back of the auditorium, one had the impression that Shostakovich was lurking somewhere in the wings; that the performers were impatient to get to him, and in the process imported the stylistic idiom of the 20th century into their reading of these two highlights of the classical canon. There was a fierceness, an edginess, a sort of impatient fervor about the playing, which, though eminently Shostakovian in tone, sounded rather rough and uncouth when imposed on Mozart’s limpid arabesques and Beethoven’s sprightly lyricism, not unlike Klemperer stomping through Bach or Nigel Kennedy’s petulant Vivaldi. Between the impatience – and the resulting carelessness of execution – and the modernist accent, one felt the performance was a tad perfunctory, a bit less respectful than was quite seemly; in short, a bit rushed.
After the interval, however, style and subject coalesced, and the result was magic. Clearly engaged in the piece, they deftly unfolded the complex story of the eighth quartet, with its lamentation for the victims of fascism and war (which provides Shostakovich’s official dedication), its subtle but damning commentary on Soviet authoritarianism, and its elegiac, reproachful autobiography. The unofficial dedication is to the composer himself: in a letter to Isaak Glikman, Shostakovich explains how the piece was not primarily about the victims of fascism and war, but an autobiographical work in which the composer himself is the victim, adding that “when I die, it’s hardly likely that someone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself. One could write on the frontispiece, ‘Dedicated to the author of this quartet’.” It is, in fact, a sort of retrospective of Shostakovich’s own life and career, with quotations from a number of his most successful works interwoven with for the most part doleful or caustic observations from his older and nearly defeated self. To his friend Rostislav Dubinsky he confided that the quartet “is myself.” Following revelations about his personal life from his son Maxim, Shostakovich apparently intended the quartet to be a swan song, a musical farewell before committing suicide. A few weeks prior to the composition of the 8th quartet, he had finally succumbed to the enormous pressure to join the Communist Party, which he felt was a catastrophic collapse of principle and a kind of moral death. A close friend discovered that Shostakovich had purchased a large quantity of sleeping pills, which he immediately handed over to Maxim with an explanation of the quartet’s supposedly true meaning.
Shostakovich did not of course commit suicide, living another 15 years and completing some of his most admired work. It was, as some commentators suggest, a sort of resurrection, expiation in the form of excoriating self-criticism and heart-felt identification with the victims of brutal regimes. There was also, with respect to this latter theme, a peculiar resonance with recent Georgian history; most obviously, with the recent war still fresh in people’s memories, the aggressive, staccato bursts of the fourth movement (which had widely been identified with the devastation of Nazi bombing) quickly and easily assumed a closer and more immediate allusive force.
The complexity, ambivalence, and deeply felt humanity of the work were thoughtfully brought out by the ensemble in a memorable performance. The variety of moods – the mournful, the wrathful, the yearning melancholy, the grotesque parody – was carefully and fluidly expressed, held together by a sustained unity of purpose and a depth of concentration lacking in the first half of the concert. The contrast was an instance of Hans Castorp’s observation, in Mann’s “The Magic Mountain,” that most music simply takes place in time, like coordinates on a graph, while great music ably played seems to fill it, usurp its priority and define the very framework through which it flows.
A final word about the venue: the Opera’s Red Hall is an attractive space, intimate and decorated with striking organic designs, as though inspired by an Islamic M.C. Escher. The acoustics are not particularly good, however, and its proximity to one of the principal bus stations on Rustaveli Avenue, especially during the rush-hour traffic of performance time, make for a good deal of intrusive noise: the whining chromatic whistle of bus brakes, the flat bellowing of their horns, and the muted barking of passing police cars frequently obtrude into the music. While this is not enough to detract significantly from the performance, one does wonder whether no more suitable venue is available. Aisle seats are recommended, in the center of the performers’ semi-circle and somewhat removed from the windows.
Story by Stefano Bertolini
6.11.2009 |
