Embattled Characters Scrap Shostakovich’s Self-Censorship: The Jerusalem Quartet at Wigmore Hall
Imbuing his benumbed motifs with lyricism, the ensemble reconfigured the composer’s works with an excessive sentimental touch.
Above: The Jerusalem Quartet in another performance of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 4 in D, Op. 83. Credit: International Chamber Players (YouTube).
Preeempting eeriness denies expressive bursts in Shostakovich’s fourth string quartet: an opus penned months after Soviet authorities had forced him to denounce his Formalist aesthetic. Self-contradictory like many of the master’s works, it stifles cries, touts lies and cuts off vigour at the bone.
Intoning gloom with droning cello strokes, The Jerusalem Quartet’s Kyril Zlotnikov allotted rationed yearning to the opening of this redacted ode last night at Wigmore Hall. First violinist Alexander Pavlovsky’s gradual diminuendo mirrored ebbing strength and a vibrato-thick motif on Sergei Bresler’s second violin suggested a split psyche. The ‘Andantino’ portion leaned on Bresler’s sapping pulse-like theme; a paradoxically lulling cello proffered calm. Later an unerasable motif tipped violist Ori Kam and Bresler into never-ending cadences deflecting cello presages: the warnings of an old man scathing youth.
Uncouth recriminations grew as Zlotnikov enlisted tackles of staccati for the ‘Allegretto (attacca)’ till a G string snapped, suspending music Shostakovich had feared scribing. Excusing himself first for five and then ten minutes, Zlotnikov was forced to make a switch while colleagues waited or endeavoured to assist. On stage a sense of urgency intensified but in the hall it sank.
Resuming the third movement, Zlotnikov attacked his notes more cautiously before succumbing to composure. Scrambling runs on violin suggested incoherent rambles of a racing mind but Kam’s viola passages met too quick a diminuendo. Romantic antics tripped into Pavlovsky’s first violin at the beginning of the fourth (another ‘Allegretto’) movement; joining dotted minims to successive quavers when they should have been distinct. Propulsive, wide vibrato also veered the work towards a contrary aesthetic. Accompanying Zlotnikov’s own tightly hemmed vibrato and its stomping bear-like notes, the first violinist sparked a clash of arts. But pizzicato on viola and the second violin brought onomatopoeic pops of pistol shots inviting to the piece.
Ticking clocks instilling shame in aspirant Stakhanovites unsealed String Quartet No. 5 in B flat through turbulent chords on viola and cello. Clamouring to mount its pitches higher, Pavlovsky’s violin became a rogue convinced to violate convention. Ripping pages entered high-pitched tones on the viola: Shostakovich’s response to earlier works that Kam presented with a chilling languor. Didactically the cello answered with corrective pizzicato. Soon a legato needlessly impinged upon Pavlovsky’s phrasing – leading sombre lines to peaks of truth this music had expunged.
Conspicuously wide vibrato threw the violinist’s pitch into excessive vacillation at the start of the ‘Andante’ movement, which transposes its first lines an octave higher. Inconsistently with the quartet’s constricting contours, Pavlovsky’s pulses fell out of conformity. A contrast surfaced in the form of Zlotnikov’s significantly less vibrato-ed cello’s penitent motif on alto clef.
Specious peace was similarly rendered by the cellist in the third ‘Moderato’ movement, but Kam overexerted his ‘with mute’ effect. Pizzicato double stops united all musicians in a vicious contrast but the end – marked in the score ‘morendo’ (‘dying’) – suffered from diverse vibratos outing different pitches.
Discretion wrested maudlin doses from Pavlovsky’s first violin to introduce the sixth quartet in G: an exercise in feigned felicity. Restraining glee, the instrumentalist presented slick staccato. Stomps were heard imposing on their writer’s creativity across sustained attacks until they ceased in second movement ‘Moderato con moto,’ which missed out on militancy. Delicateness sweetened pitches sickeningly high on violin: cries of a sparrow with clipped wings. Kam and Zlotnikov nevertheless applied their pizzicato to portray demands of patronising parents and false comfort rife in Mother Russia.
A gentility intrusive once again derailed Pavlovsky in the ‘Lento’ section with mellifluousness. The final movement pitted prisms of interpretation frequently against each other: where Kam’s viola echoed lines from first part ‘Allegretto’, Pavlovsky’s violin proclaimed its pain.
Seething underneath, the squeeze of self-repression characterizes Shostakovich’s String Quartets 4–6, suppressing vulnerability through musical experiment. While this recital kindled intermittent insights, twitching angst was mostly lacking.