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St. Mary's Anglican Church
July 7, 2016
"A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it."
Shostakovich's letter to Isaac Glikman dates from 1955, some five years before the composition of his String Quartet No.8, Op.110. He would clearly have had no problem with the notion of hearing the quartet played by four doublebassists.
But, if you are expecting this review to continue by remarking that even four doublebasses could not ruin this particular masterpiece, then you are in the wrong place.
The four members of the Bassinova Quartet made a spectacularly good case for their particular combination of instruments on Thursday night, playing not only the Shostakovich quartet, but also Beethoven's Op.95, "Il Serioso", as well as premiering a new work written for them by Victoria composer Nathan Friedman.
The Beethoven opened the evening; it is his fiercest, most concentrated quartet and the four basses undoubtedly brought a certain gruffness to the party that certainly squares with the received image of the middle-aged, increasingly deaf composer, although it did take the ear a few seconds to become accustomed to the sonorities.
The Bassinovas definitely got to the heart of the matter in a performance full of brio, with a tightness of ensemble that belied the fact that they have been playing together for less than a year.
While I doubt if anyone present was under the impression that the work was originally scored for four basses, this was far more than simply managing to play the right notes — something which, I am reliably informed, is difficult enough even for a conventional string quartet with this particular work.
Nathan Friedman's new piece, mais elle a suivi au cimetière takes its title from a poem by Mallarmé, written after the death of his son, Anatole.
Friedman most definitely has an ear for a bracing discord, as the opening of the piece amply demonstrated. Erik Abbink's excellent baritone saxophone wove its grief-stricken arabesques over bass harmonics, later indulging in glissandos and various unconventional sound-producing techniques, such as blowing through the mouthpiece and producing a high-pitched shriek, while the basses kept up their mournful dirge beneath.
An effective and affecting work, extremely well-played.
It was instructive to pass from the expression of private sorrow to Shostakovich's great outpouring of anguish at a far more public tragedy, inspired by a visit to Dresden.
Perhaps, as Shostakovich himself suggested, such a great work truly is performance-proof, but the Bassinovas' performance was far too good to provide evidence for that particular hypothesis.
Like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, a work with which the quartet has almost nothing in common whatsoever, save for being based on a four-note thematic cell — in this case, Shostakovich's signature D-S-C-H, German notation for D-E flat-C-B natural — the listener is stunned, upon reflection, by how short the piece is. I have never encountered a performance which broke the twenty-minute barrier, yet such is the devastating impact of the music that, at its close one feels that a lifetime has passed since it began.
From the aptly lugubrious opening to the bleak closing chords, the Bassinovas put nary a foot wrong in a brutally effective performance, which was followed by one of the loudest silences I have ever encountered in the concert hall, the entire audience evidently feeling that to applaud would somehow seem crass and disrespectful, like clapping at the conclusion of a funeral.
Going in to the concert, I was afraid I was going to end up quoting (not for the first time) Doctor Johnson's well-known remark about women preaching and dogs walking on their hind legs.
Coming out, I realised that the Bassinovas have no need for condescension and certainly need nobody to make allowances; they are fine musicians and deserve to be heard (and, I suppose, judged) on that basis alone.
A most enjoyable evening.
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