This disc brings the Pacifica Quartet’s Shostakovich cycle to the most satisfying possible conclusion. The last three quartets aren’t exactly easy listening. Curiously, for me anyway, the Fifteenth, which consists of five adagios and an adagio molto Funeral March just for contrast, is the easiest of the three. Despite the slow tempos, the individual movements are highly contrasted, and they are particularly strongly characterized in this performance. The result may not be uplifting, but it is very moving and, in its way, satisfying.
The Thirteenth quartet has a slow-fast-slow single-movement form, and it flirts with twelve-tone thematic material albeit within a resolutely tonal framework. Like the Fifteenth quartet its minor-key orientation (in this case B-flat minor) means that the piece conveys a basically sorrowful message, but this poised and beautifully shaped performance offers a wide range of feeling, one even more evident in the Fourteenth quartet. This must be the work’s finest performance yet. The three movements are perfectly balanced, each taking almost exactly the same length of time–two minutes faster than the benchmark Borodin Quartet in the central Adagio, and that’s all to the good. When the music reaches the childlike purity of the closing bars in F-sharp major, the effect has an almost physical impact.
As with the other releases in this series, the Shostakovich works are coupled with another Soviet-era piece that illuminates them in an interesting way. Schnittke’s Third quartet is one of his Ivesian, collage-type works, but it has in common with Shostakovich the opposition of thematic material of great simplicity with tortured, dissonant ideas. The difference is that Schnittke’s tonal or “pure” themes consist of references to earlier musical styles, whereas Shostakovich uses tunes of the nursery or dance variety. It’s fascinating to compare the works and hear how each composer accomplishes similar expressive ends using his own, highly personal means.
The engineering in all of these issues has been of demonstration quality, giving the players the opportunity to dazzle with their excellent intonation and perfect ensemble balances. There are many fine Shostakovich quartet cycles available, but none finer than this, and none more intelligently planned and programmed. I will return to these performances often, and so will you.
