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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
February 9 and 10, 2017
There are those who will insist that in order to play Dvořák authentically you must be Czech; to play Elgar, English; to play Debussy, French; and so on.
Which, if we accept the notion at face value, would make the Lafayette Quartet's performing a complete cycle of the string quartets of Shostakovich an act of either monumental folly or supreme hubris (or possibly both): after all, the quartet consists of four women, born and brought up in two of the freest, most open societies ever; whereas Shostakovich, besides being male, spent his entire working career under one of the most repressive regimes in human history. How could they ever understand Shostakovich?
But consider this from a somewhat different standpoint: imagine that a recording, albeit of indifferent quality, has just been unearthed of one of the Beethoven quartets played by an ensemble (even if they were, for example, French) who had been mentored by a friend and colleague of the composer, somebody like Ignaz Schuppanzigh, for instance, who led Count Razumovsky's quartet and gave the premieres of several of the Beethoven quartets, most notably the late ones.
What do you imagine that recording would fetch in auction at Sothebys (or, should I say, on eBay)?
Such a performance today would be accounted the very pinnacle of "authenticity"; yet exchange Shostakovich for Beethoven, Rostislav Dubinsky (first violinist of the Borodin quartet) for Schuppanzigh and we can see that the Lafayette Quartet have that same claim to authenticity, regardless of nationality (or, come to that, gender).
In a sense the preceding argument is merely an attempt to provide an explanation for what must have been immediately obvious to anyone in the Phillip T Young Recital Hall for any one of the five concerts in the cycle: that the Lafayette String Quartet understand Shostakovich's idiom intimately and that their entire career has, in a sense, been building towards this extraordinary achievement.
An unfortunate concatenation of circumstances led me to miss the first three instalments and so my remarks apply directly only to their performances of the last six quartets, although I see no reason to think that the first three were any less fine and, indeed, talking to audience members who had attended them merely reinforced the notion.
Shostakovich's last half dozen quartets come from the last decade (give or take a year) of his life; like those of Beethoven, they are inward-looking, enigmatic works. But whereas (at the risk of waxing at least semi-poetic) Beethoven's vision was forced inwards by a cruel fate, Shostakovich's was forced inwards by a cruel state. At least if the Emperor disliked Beethoven's latest work his life was not in danger.
From the very opening bars of the Quartet No.10, from 1964, two things were immediately clear: the authorship of the music was writ large in every single bar and the Lafayettes are sounding as good as, if not better than, ever. Their individual playing is exceptional, but together their unanimity of tone colour, attack, phrasing and razor-sharp ensemble emphasized just what an outstanding group they truly are.
The opening movement of the quartet was eloquent and forlorn, but with a luminous final chord. By contrast the second movement, marked allegretto furioso, which occupies a similar emotional space to the scherzos of the eighth and tenth symphonies, was quite brutal, rhythmically vital and possessed of terrific impetus. Indeed, playing was so powerful that afterwards the quartet spent the longest period I've ever heard them take onstage retuning.
The ensuing adagio was singularly bleak, albeit a rich-hued bleakness, with a beautiful plaintive cello melody from Pamela Highbaugh Aloni throughout, leading, via a bouncing viola, to the allegretto finale, with its apparently cheery theme vaguely reminiscent of the Russian Dance from the Nutcracker. However not all is as it seems (when is it in Shostakovich?) and the music's slightly inebriated feeling gradually gave way to something rather more ominous.
It would fairly quickly become tedious to give a detailed account of their performances of all six quartets from the last two concerts. And while it would be pleasing to be able simply to mention the highlights, I find myself totally unable to do this, as essentially each quartet, each movement, was a highlight.
I shall therefore satisfy myself — and, it is to be hoped, the reader — by selecting a few moments more or less at random.
The six movements of the eleventh quartet seem each to be working out a single musical idea; enigmatic throughout, its occasional hints of optimism rapidly vanquished: for Shostakovich the light at the end of the tunnel usually is an oncoming train. I especially enjoyed Joanna Hood's sardonic viola in the second movement.
Like Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, towards the end of his life Shostakovich experimented with Arnold Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone system of composition. As with Stravinsky and Copland, the resulting music still invariably sounds like Shostakovich.
The twelfth quartet is one of the works which employs tone rows and I was especially taken with the fractured waltz in its first movement. The massive second movement, with its extraordinary complexity was probably as exhausting for the audience as for the performers, although its rhythmically vital close came perilously close to sounding cheerful.
The single-movement thirteen quartet ended Thursday's concert and, despite what had gone before, the Lafayettes brought the same almost unbearable intensity to their playing of this quartet as to its three predecessors.
The fourteenth quartet featured a quite lovely violin solo from Ann Elliott-Goldschmid and most impressive control of dynamics at the close; and the immaculately precise tossing of first two, then three, then four-note phrases from one instrument to the other in the relentless dance of the third movement was quite wonderful.
There is precedent for the six successive adagio movements of the final quartet in the shape of Haydn's Seven Last Words whose first eight (of nine) movements are all slow. Yet the purpose of the two compositions could hardly be more different and Shostakovich offers us not even a false consolation.
It would not be incorrect to say that the quartet is episodic, yet these six episodes add up to a coherent narrative, however pessimistic (and the spectre of Mahler himself seems to haunt the ominous fifth movement).
To say that the performance was sombre would be to severely understate the case, yet there was still plenty to, if not actually enjoy, certainly admire in the performance, such as the remarkable series of single-note crescendos passed, on this occasion, seamlessly between the four players in the second movement, in which the quartet also showed itself perfectly willing to make ugly sounds when appropriate.
In order not to send the audience out into the darkness with that final quartet hanging over us, the Lafayettes played as an encore an arrangement (I believe they said it was by Dubinsky himself) of the first prelude and fugue from Shostakovich's Op.87, written, of course, for the piano.
This proved a most effective transcription, exquisitely played (although that should, by now, go without saying) and the dose of radiant C major was just what the doctor ordered to allay any suicidal thoughts.
I can only envy those — and they did seem to be in the majority — who managed to get to all five concerts, although I imagine they must have been emotionally drained by the end: I know I was after attending just the last two. (And speaking to two members of the quartet afterwards, it was clear that this cycle had taken its emotional toll on them also.)
To describe this as an extraordinary achievement would again be to seriously understate the case.
The Lafayettes have certainly not wasted the last thirty years; somewhere the spirit of Shostakovich is doubtless smiling...
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