Shostakovich String [Quartet] Quartets––No. 2 in A, Op. 68; No. 12 in D flat, Op. 133. Borodin Quartet (Mikhail Kopelman, Andrei Abramenkov, vns; Dmitri Shebalin, va; Valentin Berlinsky, vc).

Virgin Classics (Full price) (CD) VC7 59281-2 (63 minutes: DDD).

When the first issue in the Borodin Quartet's latest Shostakovich cycle for Virgin Classics appeared (12/91) I was not convinced that it represented an improvement on their previous recordings. This new disc is more consistently successful, and comparisons with the older cycle are to a degree academic, since EMI have seen fit to delete the disc containing the Borodin's classic accounts of Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 (3/86––I only hope someone in that company is fighting the battle against such a short-sighted policy).

Both the Second and Twelfth String Quartets are to a degree experimental; both in their different ways push the medium to the limits. The Second's long-winded Recitative and Romance, and especially the contorted Waltz and Variation movements which follow it, relate not so much to the near-contemporary Eighth and Ninth Symphonies and Second Piano Trio as to the equally exploratory Second Piano Sonata. It is a strange, unsatisfying, yet curiously compelling work, and the Borodin Quartet's solid but never blustery playing captures most of its fretful expressiveness. Only their subtlety in quiet passages has diminished noticeably over the years (hear the third variation in the finale, from 3A31B, which sounds far too real).

Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet, with its plethora of 12-note themes and its rebarbative scherzo and whirlwind trio in particular, is one of the most important sources for the agonised vein in Schnittke's music. Here at first I was less happy with the new performance. The opening pages are unsettled in intonation, and the Scherzo (beginning of track 6) feels too reined in, as though fearful of the technical difficulties to come. In these passages the EMI version is greatly to be preferred. On the other hand at least the violist has corrected the passage in the first movement which he previously read in the wrong clef (between figs. 9 and 10, from 0A27B in the new recording), and the second half of the work is finely played. Recording quality is finely judged––the ambience of The Maltings, Snape is lively without swamping the music, and textures are generally clear without being overbearing.

DJF