The practice of writing and performing string quartets endured a precarious existence in the Soviet Union during the 1940s but the form nevertheless survived the tyranny known as the Zhdanovschchina. Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg led a relatively small cohort of composers whose work made a significant contribution to the genre – 32 works between them. At Wigmore Hall, the latter’s String Quartet no. 4 was sandwiched by the former’s Fourth and Fifth in a programme that testified, in an open forum, to the quality of the writing.
Supporting the testimony were the agent-provocateurs of Quatuor Danel – Marc Danel and Gilles Millet (violins), Vlad Bogdanas (viola) and Yovan Markovitch (cello). They made an eloquent and persuasive case for the shared artistic aesthetics of Shostakovich and Weinberg in their writing of quartets. It consisted of approaching the music as having a sensuousness that permeates the fabric of the material, rather than simply highlighting the common stock of compositional techniques or foregrounding the similarities in surface textures. The old chestnut of “the anxiety of influence”, which dominates discussion of the relationship between the older composer and his talented younger colleague, was, at least for one evening, left somewhere warm and cosy.
It seems to me that having identified the sensuousness common to all three works, the Danels were then able to concentrate on the individual qualities that give each piece its identity. Weinberg’s first and third movements are highly emotional, and the players dug deep to darken the already brooding shadows; his use of aggressive bowing and other extended performance techniques gives a bitter and biting edge to the second movement, whilst the tenor of the finale shifts from moodiness to uncertainty, and ends in a sense of loss and loneliness. This is a pivotal piece in Weinberg’s cycle and the players made a strong case for its particular qualities; the decision to place it at the centre of the programme was well-judged.
Shostakovich’s introspection, as embedded in a number of his life-defining works, has long been acknowledged. The use of his DSCH motto, in various disguises, a penchant for pedal-points and his habitual self-quotation are all referenced in both quartets played by the Danels. In the first movement of the fourth, the violins and the viola were as skylarks, albeit on a cloudy day, taking flight from the desolate ground of the cello. One of his mournful waltzes haunts the second, with Marc Danel wearing a metaphorical black arm-band. The third movement could be Shostakovich in hand-wringing mode, such was the tension masterfully described by all the instruments, and in the finale the composer has other things on his mind, not his own private predicament.
All that gloom was overlaid by Shostakovich’s sketchy portrait of himself, in the Fifth Quartet, with Bogdanas a sympathetic body-double. The composer’s deeply-held passion for his pupil, Galina Ustvolskaya, finds expression in a quotation from one of her pieces tightly wrapped-up in several quotations from his own. It was here that the sensuousness was at its deepest and the heaviness of the atmosphere could only be partially dissipated by the encore – a Weinberg Capriccio.
Having already essayed Weinberg’s cycle, the Danels are about to publish their second recording of Shostakovich’s. It will have stiff competition but, on the showing of this concert, it should hold its own.
