There is a tension within this recording that I have struggled to resolve. The Cuarteto Casals are currently among the world’s best string quartets — certainly top ten. Their two previous volumes of Shostakovich quartets earned my unfettered admiration. The playing on these albums is hyper-athletic, the interpretations informed, sensitive and intelligent. Just about as good as it gets.
My first hearing of this final set left me unconvinced. The 13th quartet — a 20-minute-long movement led by the viola — felt overly harsh, unmediated by the possibility of beauty. The 14th, dedicated to a cellist, pulled too much in the opposite direction. The 15th, with six movements all marked adagio, was emphatically slow. I kept hearing the effort and sensing a disconnect between the youth and vigour of this Barcelona-based quartet and the composer’s faltering existence.
Only on the third hearing were my doubts dispelled as I warmed to the exceptional intensity of each phrase and the application of each player. The viola in the 13th quartet is uncomfortably bleak but — as Elizabeth Wilson’s erudite note reminded me — it contains elements of a recent King Lear film score, not much to smile about. The last two quartets are unmistakably about approaching death, but Shostakovich was still in his sixties and not without resistance, nor had he lost his macabre edge of humour and self-mockery. The 15th quartet plays serial games on the notes B-A-C-H and D-S-C-H, the latter constituting the composer’s initials in German transcription. The “funeral” movement, marked “Adagio molto”, is less morbid than expected. The playing is simply silken, superior in sound and skill to the original Russian recordings. One cannot ask for more.
Shostakovich died 50 years ago aged 68, a victim of Soviet oppression. His music defied the system and contributed to its downfall. The musical merit of these quartets just grows and grows.
