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

Weinberg String Quartet no.16 in A flat minor Op.130 (1981)
Weinberg String Quartet no.17 Op.146 (1986(
Shostakovich String Quartet no.15 in E flat minor Op.144

Wigmore Hall, London
Friday 27 June 2025

by Ben Hogwood Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

After giving fresh insight and context to the 32 string quartets and two piano quintets of Shostakovich and Weinberg, Quatuor Danel finally brought their Wigmore Hall cycle of both composers to a close. The journey began just before the COVID pandemic but was necessarily aborted. However on the series resumption in 2023 Wigmore Hall artistic and executive director John Gilhooly generously suggested the quartet begin the concerts afresh, a gesture acknowledged by Quatuor Danel first violinist Marc Danel before the group’s encore.

Danel admitted it had been difficult deciding which work should close the combined cycle, yet this concert proved the group had made the right decision, closing with some of Shostakovich’s final musical thoughts. Before that we heard the two very contrasting last quartets by Weinberg. His String Quartet no.16 was completed in 1981, the year in which his sister would have reached her sixtieth birthday had she not been murdered, along with the composer’s parents, in the Holocaust. Bearing her dedication, the quartet is a work of conflicting emotions, with an underlying tension trumped by a strong and lasting resolve.

Stylistically, Weinberg’s writing reflects his reacquaintance with the music of Bartók. This was evident from the heavy-set bow strokes of the first movement, where Danel led with power and precision. Weinberg allows time for calmer thoughts, but there was a guarded watchfulness that the Quatuor Danel conveyed most vividly here. The contrast between Scherzo and Trio in the second movement was striking, the emphatic gestures of the former upturned by the ghostly outlines of the otherworldly trio, which hinted at an alarm going off in the distance. The climax of the Lento felt like the culmination of a unified protest from all four instruments, its dissonant cries living long in the memory, before the waltz of the finale. Cold to the touch, the four instruments were muted but not silenced, and a period of moving stillness in the music held the attention before the waltz returned for the thoughtful closing bars.

With the String Quartet no.17, completed five years later, the mood changed completely. With a more explicit tonal language, this piece started in high spirits, Weinberg relishing the opportunity to revisit and quote from his earlier works, doing so in the spirit of pure musical enjoyment. A rustic first theme was brilliantly played here, as was the richly voiced chorale proving such an effective counterpart. This single movement work falls into four distinct sections, and eloquent solos from Danel and cellist Yovan Markovitch were memorable, before the feathery textures that began the finale, after which the chorale theme returning in an even brighter light. The positive disposition of the quartet gave it a youthful appearance beyond the references to early works, the composer enjoying childhood recollections through the viewpoint of relative seniority. The Danel ensured we were aligned in that viewpoint, too.

Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.15, however, is indisputably the work of a man in the twilight of his life. Written in six slow movements, it is one of the most distinctive utterances in the repertoire both of Shostakovich and the string quartet, and no performance should leave its audience unmoved. In the course of 40 minutes, Shostakovich leaves us with music that in terms of speed never really gets out of first gear, but whose intensity is unrelenting from its very first bars.

The Danel found that intensity with unerring accuracy, right from the first drawn-out melodies. Musically we seemed to have travelled back several centuries, the work unfolding with almost painful slowness, Shostakovich’s frailty made clear through music. And yet there is a spiritual quality looking ahead to the music of Arvo Pärt and Silvestrov, a kind of minimalism conveyed in searching, long-phrased melodies.

The Quatuor Danel were sparing in their use of vibrato, which made for an even more effective expressive tool when used, while their intonation was commendably flawless in such a difficult key for strings. In the second movement, ironically titled Serenade, the music felt inverted, its distinctive outcries made through crescendos reaching for the very soul. Marc Danel gave a searing solo at the beginning of the central Intermezzo, after which he sat, head bowed, listening to his three colleagues, while the viola solo from Vlad Bogdanas for the Funeral March was similarly charged. The Epilogue returned to the remarkable stillness present for much of this work, after which there was an equally moving silence.

It would be difficult to suggest an encore for music with such finality, but the quartet found an answer – in the shape of the first movement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.1. This might be thought an odd choice, but, as Danel explained, its music was a timely reminder for the world in which we live that the sun would come back. Hearing Shostakovich’s first and last statements for quartet in such proximity, it was hard not to agree with him – and so – with huge credit to the players for some memorable performances – this wonderful cycle concluded in the best possible way.

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, click on the names for more on composer Mieczysław Weinberg and Quatuor Danel themselves.

Published post no.2,580 – Sunday 29 June 2025

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

Weinberg String Quartet no.14 in B flat minor Op.122 (1978)
Weinberg String Quartet no.15 in G flat major Op.124 (1979-80)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.14 in F sharp major Op.142 (1972-3)

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday 6 May 2025

by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Marco Borggreve

Quatuor Danel’s interrelated cycle of string quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg reached its penultimate stage this evening, and a programme with two of the latter composer’s most oblique such pieces heard alongside what is the most accessible of the former’s late quartets.

Second in a quartet of quartets written in the years after Shostakovich’s death, Weinberg’s Fourteenth Quartet continues straight from the sombre equivocation of its predecessor. Its five continuous movements never progress systematically as lurch forwards from an edgily austere first movement, by way of a moodily impassive successor, then on to a scherzo and intermezzo that are not so much elusive as gnomic in character; prior to a finale where any attempt at overall synthesis gradually subsides to leave only the wanly resigned conclusion. An ending, moreover, whose fatalism feels the more dismaying as it withdraws into virtual silence, as if Weinberg’s self-communing may well be a defence or even escape. As with its successor, his replacing tempo headings with metronome markings only abets obfuscation.

The Fifteenth Quartet might appear relatively less stark in outcome yet is certainly the most radical of all these works in formal design. Its nine mainly brief movements are interpretable in various ways – but a speculative sonata design is implied by the aggressive ‘development’ of the central three movements as framed by respectively angular and thrusting ‘transitions’; surrounded in turn by a two-stage ‘exposition’ of almost secretive inwardness which is itself balanced by a ‘reprise’ whose incrementally more direct expression facilitates that eventual, albeit tenuous sense of closure. Other approaches are entirely plausible, though there was an undeniable culmination imparted to those middle movements as the Danel steered its secure course through this fascinating if always disconcerting instance of Weinberg’s later maturity.

After such obliquities, the seeming directness of Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Quartet was the more affecting, though nothing should be taken at face value at this stage of its composer’s creativity. Allusions to earlier works (his own and others) abound and while the presence of serial elements is reduced next to its predecessors, sparsity of texture ensures a distanced or remote feeling even when this music is at its most active. As is true for most of the opening Allegretto, its lilting poise increasingly fitful as it nears a regretful if still inquisitive close.

By contrast, the central Adagio finds this composer at his most inward and confessional; its content allotted for much of its course to first violin and cello, so affording an austerity into which the eloquence of the ‘Angel Serenade’ by Gaetano Braga is a reminder Shostakovich was at time considering an operatic treatment of Chekhov’s story The Black Monk. The final Allegretto initially brings a more impetuous discourse, but this elides seamlessly into a coda whose pale radiance essentializes the work’s home key in a leave-taking of acute poignancy.

As always, the Danel gave its collective both here and in those miniatures which served as a welcome encore: two pieces from Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, arranged for string quartet by Sergey Samsonov with a sensitivity for those piano originals as was nothing if not idiomatic.

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 final 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.2,528 – Friday 9 May 2025