Shostakovich String [Quartet] Quartets—No. 3 in F, Op. 73; No. 7 in F sharp minor, Op. 108; No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110. Borodin Quartet (Mikhail Kopelman, Andrei Abramenkov, vns; Dmitri Shebalin, va; Valentin Berlinsky, vc).

Virgin Classics (Full price) (CD) VC7 91437-2 (67 minutes: DDD).

As my last experience of the Eighth Quartet was Alexander Lazarev's man-handling of the Barshai string orchestra transcription (10/91) I approached this new recording with high expectations. This, after all, is the ensemble two of whose members were in the original Borodin Quartet and whose playing of the work at a private audition reduced the composer to tears (the recording released soon afterwards is now again available on Decca, coupled with the Borodin Second, and the Gabrieli Quartet in the Tchaikovsky First—see MEO's review of May 1990).

Curiously, the Eighth turns out to be the least successful of the three works here newly recorded. The middle movements, I should stress, have tremendous lacerating intensity, and the cello's statement of the Lady Macbeth quotation at 4'09" in the fourth movement, is uncannily beautiful. But even these parts are played largely as though from the point of view of horrific external events, rather than of the individual experiencing them; and the real problem with the interpretation is that the outer movements are given a treacly-romantic, calculatedly over-dramatized treatment, which to my mind detracts from, even neutralizes, their emotional charge. It is almost as though one were hearing a quartet transcription of a piece originally for string orchestra.

Roughly the same reservation applies to the EMI Borodin Quartet recording (coupled with Quartet No. 7 and the Piano Quintet) although the failing is not so obvious there, given the less glamorous recorded sound. The Fitzwilliam Quartet are less completely authoritative and the late-seventies Decca recordings are rather nasal in quality, but their interpretation is in many ways more searching. However, for myself I would be inclined to stick with the earliest Borodin recording.

I have no such strong reservations over the Third and Seventh Quartets, although the beginning of No. 7 is too loud, and in general there is a tendency for softer passages to emerge in a rather emotionally generalized form. What is so immensely telling is the Borodin's depth of tone and stability of rhythm, no matter how daunting the technical surface of the music. The second movement of No. 7, taken way below the prescribed tempo, is effectively tight-lipped and staring, and it leads into a fearsome, stinging finale, and a sure-footed walk along the emotional tightrope of the later stages. The opening allegretto of No. 3 is immensely solid and the succeeding movements pack a terrific punch; the finale coda shows how hauntingly the Borodin can play when they chose.

The close-up impact of the recording, which enhances the chilling excitement of so much on this disc, may be one reason why parts of the Eighth Quartet appear to lack intimacy. This is a recording which aspiring string quartets should hear, but whose authority in certain movements they would accept only at their peril.

DJF