Solitude: Mendelssohn, Weinberg & Shostakovich

Album review

At first glance, this 2018 Resonus release by the Dudok Kwartet may seem like an odd mix of unrelated pieces and arrangements for string quartet, but the connective theme is apparent in the title, Solitude. This is properly understood as the solitude of bereavement and grief, as opposed to a state of peaceful reflection or simply being alone, for the works by Felix Mendelssohn, Josquin des Prez, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Dmitry Shostakovich, and Carlo Gesualdo, disconnected though they may be in time and place, were composed in response to death and loss, and sometimes these responses encompass extremes of emotion. Even so, the album's brooding tone is perhaps more important than the differences of periods and styles, and the passionate intensity of this Dutch string quartet makes a convincing case for the program. Mendelssohn's tense String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 was written as a memorial to his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, and reflects the stress he felt over her death and which led to his own death six months later. Somewhat balancing the Mendelssohn quartet is Weinberg's String Quartet No. 3 in D minor, Op. 14, which is similarly melancholy and anxious, though expressed through an edgy modernism that makes it a natural fit with Dmitry Shostakovich's Elegy from the Two Pieces for String Quartet. To show that expressions of despondency and desperation transcend time, the quartet plays Josquin's Mille regretz and Gesualdo's Moro Lasso, in arrangements by the group's cellist, David Faber, and though they are much shorter than the full-scale string quartets, they contribute to the collection's dark sensibility and introspective feeling.

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