Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: String Quartets Nos. 14 & 15,Opp.142,144

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This recording makes an excellent coda to the recent re-issue of the Borodin set from the '70s on Chandos. That set concludes with #13 -- the final recording by the original Borodin Quartet members. This recording of the last two quartets, from Czech Radio broadcasts of 1976, 1977, are by ensembles as closely associated with the composers as the Borodin Quartet. If anything, the Beethoven Quartet had the closest association, premiering most if not all the quartets, and recording the Quintet twice with the composer at the piano.

If you can find the Vanguard recording of the Quintet coupled with the Second Quartet, get it. I would also recomend the LYS recordings (LYS 369-370), a 2-CD set of performances from 1940, 1946, and 1948 with with Oistrakh, the Beethoven Quartet, the Tchaikovsky Quartet, Sadlo, Chafrin, and Shostakovich at the piano in the Trio No.2, 'Cello sonata, 3rd Quartet, and Quintet.

With the the Beethoven Quartet, a 30-year relationship with the composer invests their performance of #14 with a unique perspective, if not the last word in virtuosity.

Established in 1964, the Glinka Quartet disolved between the late 70's and 1980, the violist and the 'cellist emigrating to Holland, the two founding violinists remaining in the USSR. In Holland the two emigrants formed a New Glinka Quartet with compatriots living there. I can't help but wonder if the music of these late quartets was 'instrumental' in the breakup of the original quartet. How does one respond to such bleakness, such despair -- surrender or escape?