The Soviet Experience (Volume II) (Dimitri Chostakovitch - Serge Prokofiev)

Album review

Chicago-based Cedille label's ambitious "The Soviet Experience" series continues with this set of early Shostakovich string quartets from the 15 years surrounding World War II, along with one unusual Prokofiev quartet of the same period. In addition to reflecting the situations in which he lived, Shostakovich's quartets deal with a different kind of legacy as well: the Beethovenian tradition of the string quartet as it developed through the 19th century and became an outlet for inward emotion refined into well-crafted melody and counterpoint. The composer waited awhile before taking on the quartet genre: the String Quartet No. 1 in C major, Op. 49, was composed in 1935, more than a decade into his mature career. That and the String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68, have more in common with Shostakovich's preludes and fugues for piano than with his other chamber music. The String Quartet No. 3 in F major, Op. 73, and String Quartet No. 4 in D major, Op. 83, do reflect the tragic events of the war and the period of repression that followed it, but the Third Quartet is quite unlike, say, the grim Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67, with which it is almost contemporaneous. The quartet is subtler in its approach and relies on the weaving of Jewish-inflected material into the flow of counterpoint to make its statement. The Quartet No. 4 postdates Shostakovich's denunciation by Stalinist cultural apparatchiks and was written, he said, "for the desk drawer." It, too, uses Jewish melodic materials. World War II left its mark on Prokofiev in a different way: he and other musicians were sent away from the front to the town of Nalchik in the Caucusus, where earlier researchers including Khatu Temirkanov (father of the conductor of the same surname) and Sergei Taneyev had collected local folk music. The rarely heard String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92, is influenced by these materials. Chicago-based Pacifica Quartet delivers some of the best Shostakovich performances from outside Russia in these five works, where they catch the combination of highly internal quality and strong feeling. The album is almost worth the purchase price for the remarkable graphics alone, a 1943 anti-Nazi propaganda poster showing a Soviet soldier with a broom whose stalks each represent cities liberated from the Nazis who are being swept away. Recommended.
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