Rudolf Barshai’s chamber orchestra arrangements of Shostakovich’s quartets have become very popular, both in concert and on disc. There are five in all, “symphonizing” Quartets Nos. 1, 3, 4, 8 and 10. Nos. 3 and 4 include parts for winds, brass and/or percussion, and this release feature those works that only require string orchestra (save for a couple of notes on the celesta in No. 1). Now, if you’re going to name your group after the composer himself, you’d damn well better play the living daylights out of his music, and fortunately that is exactly what the Dmitri Ensemble under Graham Ross does.
Unlike the recent Naxos recording with Yablonsky from Kiev, the players’ corporate sonority has a more rounded, sweeter tone in lyrical passages (Quartet No. 1, first movement of No. 10) that provides the greatest possible contrast to the unbridled ferocity of the Eighth Quartet’s Allegro Molto second movement, or the Tenth’s Allegretto furioso. There’s no question of them sugaring the pill though. Harmonia Mundi’s amply “open” engineering gives the group a big, rich sound, providing for maximum physical impact over a wide dynamic range.
Graham Ross, who does double duty as conductor and celesta soloist, paces each work to perfection–I was especially impressed with his handling of the Tenth Quartet’s long finale–making these performances easily as desirable as Barshai’s own (he never made a satisfactory version of his First Quartet transcription), or the competing versions on BIS. It’s simply a question of couplings. For the string orchestra-only pieces, you can hardly do better than this.
