Le Chant du Monde’s series of historic Shostakovich performances continues with two Czech Radio broadcasts: a 1977 recording of No. 14 with the Glinka Quartet (in the group’s original Soviet incarnation); and the Beethoven Quartet performing No. 15 in 1976. Shostakovich’s last two quartets–part of a series that was originally planned to encompass 24 quartets, to correspond to the number of major and minor keys–are deeply marked by a meditative spirit. Written as they were during the last two years of the composer’s life (a period in which Shostakovich was racked by ill health), perhaps that inward-dwelling quality is fitting. The only movement in either work that approaches jocularity–and it’s quite a wry humor at that–is the opening Allegretto of the Fourteenth quartet. The last quartet, in fact, is a series of no less than six adagios, an architecture that brings to mind Haydn’s comparably slow Last Seven Words on the Cross. Otherwise, the quartets reflect nothing so much as the stripped-bare, sharply delineated lines of the Art of Fugue. (Shostakovich’s deep admiration–and emulation–of Bach is a continuing theme in all the composer’s later quartets.)
All this background information is meant to give context to two profound and exemplary interpretations that take those qualities most seriously, incisive readings that deserve to be considered benchmark performances. There’s no hiding in these quartets–every note, every interaction, is laid bare for all the world to see–and both ensembles are more than up to the task at hand. Dmitri Tzyganov, the Beethoven’s first violinist, deserves special recognition for his virtuosic turn in the Intermezzo of the Quartet No. 15, and again in the first notes of the Epilogue.) Shostakovich’s affiliation with the Beethoven Quartet makes its recording particularly valuable; the Quartet No. 14, which this group premiered in 1973, was dedicated to the ensemble’s cellist, Sergey Shirinsky, who died one year later, during rehearsals for Quartet No. 15.
As important and deeply moving as these performances are artistically, the sound, plagued by high levels of hiss, unfortunately requires a certain patience from the listener. The audio space in which each note is so firmly imprinted isn’t the tabula rasa it’s meant to be: the hiss winds up a fifth, unrelentingly constant presence along with the four players. If these were recordings from the 1920s–or even the 1940s–the hissiness would be more easily forgiven. But from the 1970s?
