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never strays from a musing uncertainty the ensuing Allegretto (originally preceded by a vivid scherzo, subsequently withdrawn) offsets through its poise and charm.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

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

Shostakovich String Quartet no.4 in D major Op.83 (1949)
Weinberg String Quartet no.4 in E flat major Op.20 (1945)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.5 in B flat major Op.92 (1952)

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday 19 January 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Having got past its second instalment this time around, the Quatuor Danel’s cycle of string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg tonight encountered its most impressive programme thus far; the latter’s Fourth Quartet being framed by the former’s Fourth and Fifth Quartets.

Given its public premiere over four years after completion (it seems likely there were private hearings in the interim), Shostakovich’s Fourth Quartet is one among several of his pieces in which Jewish melody and inflection predominates. The key surely lies in emphasizing these as a structural as much as, if not more than, an emotional facet – as the Danel demonstrated with a take on the preludial Allegretto whose fervour never seemed anecdotal. The ensuing Andantino’s heightened pathos becomes anguished at its climax, while the scherzo is one of those speculative movements whose intimations the Danel projects so convincingly. With its implacable heading to an impulsive culmination then its allusive subsiding into an equivocal half-close, the final Allegretto conveys a tangibly but by no means concretely human drama.

Arguably his first masterpiece in the genre, Weinberg’s Fourth Quartet finds this composer tackling the Beethovenian model head-on – albeit with an opening Allegro whose unhurried manner and burnished textures only takes on greater urgency in its latter stages. The Danel brought this out accordingly, then pointed up the expressive contrast with a scherzo whose driving and ingratiating main themes alternate without hope of resolution. No less potently realized was the interplay between strident rhetoric and halting processional in the ensuing Largo, its unrelieved sombreness tentatively countered by a final Allegro which hints at an affirmative end, only to dismiss such possibility with its desperate closing crescendo. Well- received at its premiere, this quartet should have secured Weinberg’s reputation forthwith.

Other than his Twelfth, the Fifth Quartet is Shostakovich’s finest such achievement – directly preceding his Tenth Symphony with which it shares a comparable formal as well as expressive inclusivity. The Danel launched its opening Allegro with ample resolve, as if to underline the cumulative momentum of an outwardly Classical sonata form whose strenuous development carries over into a heightened reprise, then on to a coda whose pizzicato undertow establishes an emotional distance that connects seamlessly with what follows in this continuous design.

What follows is the most inwardly profound of Shostakovich’s slow movements – its overall remoteness tempered by allusion to his recent works then embargoed, with a passing raptness that might or might not be inherently personal in import. The Danel maintained concentration unerringly here, then headed straight into a finale whose initial geniality duly gives way to an explosive central climax and, in turn, tentative retracing of earlier ideas before a coda whose fatalistic radiance yields the most affecting end to any of its composer’s large-scale statements.

It certainly brought out the best interpretively from the Danel, who still found energy for an encore in the guise of a Capriccio that Weinberg wrote in the wake of his First Symphony in 1943: its amiable if sometimes barbed playfulness an ideal way to conclude a superb recital.

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.2,125 – Friday 22 March 2024

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

Weinberg String Quartet no. 2 in G major Op. 3/145 (1939-40, rev. 1986)
Weinberg String Quartet no. 3 in D minor Op. 14 (1944, rev. 1987)
Shostakovich String Quartet no. 3 in F major Op. 73 (1946)

Wigmore Hall, London
Friday 12 January 2024

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Commenced anew last November, after having been abandoned in the wake of the pandemic, the Quatuor Danel’s cycle of string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg at Wigmore Hall continued this evening with formative works from the latter and a masterpiece by the former.

Hopefully it will not be long before Weinberg’s Second String Quartet (1940) has entered the repertoire. Written during his two years in Minsk (after having fled a Poland overrun by Nazi forces), its ‘back to basics’ outlook is evident in the initial Allegro’s textural clarity and easy lyricism, but also a compositional flair asserting itself in the movement’s tensile development and combative coda. Revision saw the Andante become a more complex and imposing entity, its fraught central section intensifying the sombre expression either side, along with an extra movement. This taciturn yet wistfully elegant Intermezzo makes for an admirable foil to the Finale, its rondo format energetically traversed through to a curtly decisive close. The Danel was palpably in command of music which transcends any apprenticeship quality with ease.

Shorter and more concentrated, Weinberg’s Third Quartet exudes an overarching emotional intensity. The Danel was mindful to observe those attacca markings such as give the overall design its unity within diversity – the uninhibited energy of the opening Presto by no means offset with the bittersweet poise of the central Andante, its taciturn unease being continued in a final Allegretto as affords only the most tenuous of closes and one which arguably feels too provisional, even in this insightful a reading. One reason, perhaps, the composer overhauled this piece when recasting it more than three decades later as his Second Chamber Symphony, when a completely new and more ‘conclusive’ finale was substituted for the original. Which is not to deny the fascination of this music from a crucial stage in his mastery of the medium.

A mastery as Shostakovich achieved with his own Third Quartet, its five movements drawing on those formal and expressive possibilities of his wartime Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, so the opening movement unfolds almost as a revisiting of that from the latter piece. The Danel undeniably had the measure of its playful capriciousness and brought out the ominous unease of the intermezzo, then headlong aggression of the scherzo which follow. Shostakovich’s first recourse to a passacaglia in his quartets, the slow movement exuded acute eloquence and this ensemble timed to perfection its cumulative approach to the finale’s searing apex. From here, the gradual dissipation of accumulated tension was palpably conveyed through to the numbed fatalism of a conclusion in which Shostakovich seems intent on bowing before the inevitable.

At this stage in the Danel’s traversal one might have expected either or both of Weinberg’s standalone Aria and Capriccio (written 1942-3) to have been given as encores. Instead, the players opted for repeating the finale from his Second Quartet, which at least provided the necessary uplift after the close of the Shostakovich. Hopefully those two pieces will be heard after the next instalment of this cycle, the Fourth Quartets of both composers being followed with the Fifth Quartet of Shostakovich: truly a ‘concert and a half’ as regards string quartets.

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.2,057 – Monday 12 January 2024