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

Shostakovich String Quartet no.7 in F# minor Op.108 (1959-60)
Weinberg String Quartet no.7 in C major Op.59 (1957)
Weinberg String Quartet no.8 in C minor Op.66 (1959)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.8 in C minor Op.110 (1960)

Wigmore Hall, London
Monday 3 June 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Quatuor Danel’s interleaving of string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg arrived at its effective half-way point this evening with a programme featuring the seventh and eighth of their respective cycles: quartets that are as different from each other as are these composers.

His briefest and likely most ambivalent, Shostakovich’s Seventh Quartet is dedicated to the memory of his first wife from the vantage of the short-lived marriage to his second. Its three movements play without pause, their oblique formal and expressive circularity being potently realized here – whether those fugitive speculations of the opening Allegretto, wistful regret of the central Lento, or seething anger of a final Allegro whose fugal aggression pointedly heads back to the opening theme for a close of simmering unease. Music, then, which implies much more than could really be stated, as the Danel underlined throughout this perceptive reading.

Coming 11 years after its monumental predecessor, Weinberg’s Seventh Quartet might seem representative of a (necessary) lowered ambition in the late- and post-Stalin years. Subdued and even enervated, its opening Adagio never strays from a musing uncertainty the ensuing Allegretto (originally preceded by a vivid scherzo, subsequently withdrawn) offsets through its poise and charm. Neither predicts a finale as takes the precedent of that in Shostakovich’s Second Quartet to its logical extreme – these 23 variations on a sombre theme unfolding as a palindrome from sustained grandeur to seething energy, then back to the start for a glowering apotheosis. Undoubtedly one of the great such movements in the history of the string quartet.

Such music would usually mark the end of a programme but, following the trajectory of this double-cycle, it concluded the first half of a recital which continued with Weinberg’s Eighth Quartet. Once relatively familiar through its championing from the Borodin Quartet and, in the UK, the Lindsays, its single movement (reciprocally taken to a new level with the 13th Quartet of Shostakovich) builds from initial reticence to a dance-like section of pronounced Klezmer inflections. Affording a culmination of audible anguish, this duly subsides towards the mood of the opening for a conclusion of becalmed intimacy realized to perfection here.

It is worth recalling how much more frequently played, compared to the rest of his cycle, was Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet even a quarter-century after its composer’s death. All credit to the Danel for investing it with a continual sense of (re-?) discovery – the pensive allusiveness of its initial movement yielding an anticipation brutalized by the violence of its scherzo then deflected by the quizzical repartee of its intermezzo. The fourth movement assuredly took no hostages to fortune in its graphic alternation between the confrontational and consoling, and it remained for the finale to restore emotional equilibrium with its resumption of the opening music – albeit now devoid of quotations as Shostakovich stands ‘naked’ before his listeners.

A gripping performance and one, moreover, that brought this first phase of the Danel’s cycle to a natural close. It resumes on October 16th with the Ninth and 10th Quartets by Weinberg alongside the Ninth Quartet by Shostakovich – a programme equally eventful and intriguing.

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.2,200 – Wednesday 5 June 2024

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

Weinberg String Quartet no.5 in B flat major Op.27 (1945)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.6 in G major Op.101 (1956)
Weinberg String Quartet no.6 in E minor Op.35 (1946)

Wigmore Hall, London
Monday 29 April 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Quatuor Danel’s ongoing cycle devoted to the string quartets of Shostakovich and Weinberg reached its fourth instalment this evening with a programme in which two of the latter’s most characteristic such pieces framed what is among the most ambivalent of the former’s works.

Composed in the aftermath of the Second World War, Weinberg’s Fifth Quartet emerges as a divertimento in concept but hardly in substance. The opening Melodia underlines this with its brooding theme on violin that intensifies expressively as the movement expands texturally, while the ensuing Humoreska has a dance-like insouciance that takes on ominous overtones as it unfolds. This accrued tension bursts forth in the central Scherzo with its violent motivic and gestural exchanges between the players, then the Improvisation revisits earlier material from an inevitably more troubled perspective. It only remains for the final Serenata to bring closure via its familiar gambit of summing-up the whole from a likely emotional remove, only to take on greater immediacy on the way to a musing close: something ideally conveyed here.

The mid-1950s was a difficult time for Shostakovich, recently widowed and unsure as to his future direction. Dedicated to his second wife, the Sixth Quartet can seem as tentative as this marriage proved short-lived – the genial quality of the opening Allegretto’s themes assuming much more combative guise as the movement evolves, with the Moderato that follows poised uncertainly between scherzo and intermezzo but without committing either way. The second of its composer’s passacaglias in a quartet context, the Lento unfolds as a processional both fatalistic and doubtful before heading into a final Allegretto whose inherent nostalgia exudes a sepia-tinted regret at its core. As previously, the Danel was mindful to vary the expressive intent of that recurrent closing cadence – one whose finality is ultimately borne of resignation.

The last work proved to be a culmination in all senses. Over six decades might have elapsed between its composition and its premiere (by this ensemble), but Weinberg’s Sixth Quartet is one of his finest and a highpoint of quartet-writing in the twentieth century. Although it runs to six movements, there is never risk of diffusiveness or loss of focus – witness the deceptive equability of its initial Allegro, such equivocation decisively countered by the violent Presto whose unbridled energy has barely been dispelled across the brief and recitative-like Allegro.

Despite its fugal mobility, the ensuing Adagio emerges as a slow movement frozen in intent – something the Danel brought out as acutely as it did that bittersweet anxiety of the Moderato which follows. More than in any of Weinberg’s earlier quartets, the final Andante maestoso is a fitting destination – its almost monumental power fashioning elements previously heard into a cumulative structure whose outcome is one of desperation mingled with defiance. Not hard to fathom why the Soviet authorities should have prohibited even a private performance.

Whether or not it has become a ‘signature work’ for the Danel, the sheer emotional input of this reading assuredly took no hostages. Shostakovich’s 1931 arrangement of Katerina’s aria from the third scene of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk duly made for an eloquent envoi.

You can hear the music from the concert below, in recordings made by Quatuor Danel:

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.2,167 – Friday 3 May 2024