Quatuor Danel [Marc Danel & Gilles Millet (violins), Vlad Bogdanas (viola), Yovan Markovitch (cello)]

Shostakovich String Quartet no.11 in F minor Op.122 (1966)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.12 in D flat major Op.133 (1968)
Weinberg String Quartet No. 12 Op.103 (1969-70)

Wigmore Hall, London
Wednesday 15 January 2025

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

This latest instalment in Quatuor Danel’s traversal of the string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg comprised the Twelfth Quartets from both composers – masterpieces both, and was prefaced by the teasing brevity and obliqueness of the former’s preceding such composition.

His 60th year marked the onset of Shostakovich’s ‘late period’ – its overt introspection being appropriate for a piece dedicated to the memory of Vasily Shirinsky, former second violinist of the Beethoven Quartet who premiered all but the first and last of the composer’s cycle. In fact, the Eleventh Quartet is appreciably more varied than this memorial aspect may suggest – the Introduction initiating a subdued discourse given an ironic twist in the Scherzo then erupting combatively in the Recitative, prior to the anxiety of the Etude and ruthlessness of the Humoresque. This performance came into its own with the Elegy, a remembrance of enfolding pathos – after which, the Finale assumed that retrospective function found in many of Shostakovich’s later works with due emphasis on its stealthy and quixotic humour.

Just two years on brought Shostakovich’s Twelfth Quartet – if not his greatest then surely in the top two, while arguably uncharacteristic in its self-conscious yet masterly formal design. Although not introductory as such, the Danel was mindful to keep its opening movement on a tight rein such that its interplay of mood and tempo inferred without defining those seismic confrontations to come. This longest and most diverse of its composer’s quartet movements did not disappoint – the Danel having fullest measure of an 18-minute span whose eventual subsiding presages a pizzicato-driven assault the more visceral for being so methodical in its unfolding. Nor was the allusion to initial material at all misconstrued as this work enters its climactic phase, a transformation whose unbridled affirmation was powerfully in evidence.

It might have emerged barely 18 months on, but Weinberg’s Twelfth Quartet feels comparable only in its scope and ambition. A likely response to the creative radicalism this composer had encountered on returning to his native Poland after over a quarter-century, its four movements essentially reinvent the Classical archetype so that the opening Largo outlines a succession of amorphous or disruptive elements with little audible regard for just how they might interact – something that will only come into focus as the work unfolds while opening-out expressively.

This evolution takes in a stealthy if always speculative Allegretto, and a Presto whose violence has become assaultive by its close. It remains for the final Moderato to effect closure through a synthesis almost improvisatory for all its formal rigour. Allied to this comes a dominance of playing techniques that does not intensify the music as drain it of all emotion and so reduce it to merest gestures by the end. A remarkable piece, even so, and a testament to its composer’s tenacity in the face of an unsympathetic, often antagonistic cultural climate at home or abroad.

Tonight’s impressive reading almost had to be abandoned as Gilles Millet’s bridge collapsed just before the end of the third movement, but his last-minute location of a replacement saw it resume to the close – an unexpected hiatus seemingly in accord with this extraordinary work.

You can hear the music from the concert below, in recordings made by Quatuor Danel -including their most recent cycle of the Shostakovich quartets on Accentus:

For more information on the next concert in the series, visit the Wigmore Hall website. You can click on the names for more on composer Mieczysław Weinberg and Quatuor Danel themselves.

Published post no.2,414 – Friday 17 January 2025