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