In an interview for Gramophone magazine, violinist Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson Quartet professed his adoration of the Borodin Quartet’s Shostakovich cycle from the late ’70s/early ’80s (BMG/Melodiya). It is, indeed, a recorded milestone (so is the Emerson Shostakovich cycle on Deutsche Grammophon which this writer praised in a feature review for ClassicsToday!). The Borodins remade one third of the cycle for Virgin in 1990. While the sonics are warmer and closer-miked, the performances don’t always match the fire and intensity of the older ones. Compare, for instance, the driving fury of the Seventh Quartet’s crazed fugal movement in the Melodiya recording to its less petulant counterpart later on. The Twelfth Quartet is a study in eerily disintegrating tonality, and the work’s spooky inflections and ravishing pianissimos are treated more perfunctorily in 1990. Conversely, the Eighth Quartet’s wailing textural buildups and the Second Quartet’s gently acerbic Waltz benefit from finer-grained internal balances and intonation, although the latter quartet’s eloquent violin recitative in the second movement yields to the earlier recording’s incantatory fervor. At the very least, this set provides an inexpensive way of acquiring a nice cross-section of Shostakovich’s quartets without having to buy a whole cycle. For a comparable price, however, you can find fresher, more robustly engineered versions on Naxos in the hands of the Eder Quartet.
