Here is my Tuesday October 19 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Sunday afternoon October 17, 2010 first installment of the Shostakovich Quartet Cycle by the Pacifica Quartet at Roosevelt University's Ganz Hall. The next installment takes place October 31 with three more in January and February, 2011.
Pacifica shows intimate knowledge of Shostakovich string quartets
The passing of time is often a subject in Dmitri Shostakovich's 15 string quartets. It is also a part of their story. The Soviet composer came relatively late to the form, writing his first quartet at 31 in 1938, after he had already gained worldwide attention for his Fifth Symphony and other works. The genre then became, along with his 15 symphonies, a major part of his focus for 36 years, almost up until his death at 68 in 1975.
Remarkably, it was not until 1982 that American audiences had the chance to experience the full cycle of works when Britain's Fitzwilliam Quartet, to whom Shostakovich had entrusted the premières of his last three works in the series, brought them to New York. This was the time when the so-called Shostakovich Wars were in full flame, with academic arguments spilling over into the newspapers about whether the composer's music was political or personal or both and whether he had been a servant of the Soviet communist regime or a semi-secret dissident.
Those dates are all long ago for the young members of the Illinois-based Pacifica Quartet. And that is just as well, as the ensemble begins its own survey of these landmark chamber works in Chicago, at the Krannert Center at their University of Illinois home base, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (where they are quartet in residence). and at London's Wigmore Hall over the next two seasons. A recording of the set with Chicago's Cedille Records is also a part of their ambitious project.
For the Pacifica can now play these pieces as music without having to stake a position on their additional meanings. Even Robert Strong's useful program notes follow the work of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Judith Kuhn, who has been the first to look at all the quartets from a truly musicological perspective.
I have run hot and cold and in-between on the Pacifica over the years, finding their work with modern and contemporary music -- such as their marathon performances of the complete quartets of America’s senior composer Elliott Carter -- much more convincing than that with the classic repertoire. I also experienced some periods when technical difficulties appeared too frequently.
Judging from their opening Shostakovich program Sunday afternoon at Roosevelt University's Ganz Hall, any reservations about the group can be discarded. Their performance of the first three quartets was so accomplished, cohesive, and inspiring that you would have thought they had been playing these works all of their lives, rather than just launching their full survey. This was the sort of playing that can only come from a group that has set the highest standards for itself and can both meet them and work together in complete unity.
The First Quartet, in C Major, Op. 49, was written in the summer of 1938, a year after the Fifth Symphony had restored Shostakovich to public and official esteem. At just 15 minutes, it is the shortest in the series but an accomplished effort to make the traditional four-person, four-movement structure work with a mid-20th century voice, albeit one that remains tonal, as did almost all of Shostakovich's works throughout his life.
The Second Quartet, in A Major, Op. 68, came in 1944 as World War II was in some of its darkest days, but while Shostakovich and his family were able to spend the summer in seclusion at a government-supported guest house for artists. One of the composer's first two works, along with the Second Piano Trio, to feature Jewish folk themes, the Pacifica played the 35-minute piece with such refinement and commitment that they received both pin-drop silence in the hall and a rare and deserved mid-program standing ovation at its conclusion. I have heard the work live many times and cannot imagine hearing it played better than this.
With the Third Quartet, in F Major, Op. 73, written in 1946, we start to hear many more of the motifs, treatments, and tricks that characterize Shostakovich's music. They make one wonder how much of what is good in his music is original and how much that is original is any good. Perhaps initially written to describe the war and its aftermath as they affected the Soviet Union, the five-movement, half-hour work was published without its proposed narrative subtitles. Jewish themes appear, as a political statement or as a personal identification with people who could, in the composer's words, "build a jolly melody on sad intonations," we do not know.
Emotions take center stage here in the composition, sometimes in overly obvious ways. But the four players, first violin Simin Ganatra, second violin Sibbi Bernhardsson, viola Masumi Per Rostad, and cello Brandon Vamos, play with such dignity and care, and listen to one another so completely, that one is fully engaged in their performance at all times. How they managed to repeat this entire and intense program at Ganz later the same evening I do not know. But that is how they have chosen to present the series to get maximum audience in an appropriately intimate hall.
This is one of the great events of the season. Kudos to the Pacifica, Roosevelt's Chicago College of Performing Arts and its dean Henry Fogel, and Shauna Quill of the University of Chicago Presents and its 16-month showcase The Soviet Arts Experience for making it happen.
October 31 brings the 4th and 5th quartets as well as the earlier and well-known 1940 Piano Quintet with young pianist Orion Weiss. Three more programs take place in January and February 2011.
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