Soviet Experience, Vol. 1: Shostakovich & Myaskovsky

As William Hussey’s illuminating but theory-heavy liner notes point out, the fifteen string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich are “arguably, the greatest string quartet cycle of the twentieth century.” The Pacifica Quartet launch a complete quartet cycle with this recording that couples the String Quartets Nos. 5 – 8 with the last quartet by Shostakovich’s older contemporary Nikolay Myaskovsky (1881 – 1950). Ongoing volumes will feature Shostakovich quartets with quartets by his other Soviet contemporaries.

Shostakovich’s String Quartets are deeply personal works that offer insights into his life and the dangerous world of the totalitarian state in which he lived. At times these works are not pretty, so it’s a supreme challenge for a quartet to walk that tightrope between communicating the quartets’ hidden meanings and private messages while also remaining musical. The Pacifica negotitates that tricky balance between the fifth quartet’s pained intensity and its more lyrical moments. The eerie but beautiful transition between the first and second movement is done very well with first violinist Simin Ganatra firmly sustaining that high F until it dissolves into the ether. The Pacifica bites into those violent outer movements of the seventh quartet with a snarl and play with warmth in the eerie Lento, making it all the more unsettling. The eighth quartet is in some ways Shostakovich in a nutshell: melancholy, sardonic, lyrical and macabre. The quartet’s  score was published with the subtitle “To the Victims of Fascism and War,” but its misery is a very private one, Shostakovich referred to it as a eulogy for himself. The Pacifica makes the pain almost palpable in the two Largos that close the work and deliver as disturbing (in a good way) a performance of the work as I’ve ever heard.

Myaskovsky, along with Shostakovich, Prokofiev and others were savaged by Soviet party thug Andrei Zhdanov in his 1948 edict on “Formalism in Music.” The edict was nothing more than the party grinding its boot into the face of art, but it carried weight. Myaskovsky’s career as well as that of his students was damaged. Thankfully, the Pacifica gives Myaskovsky his due with this emotionally committed and technically polished performance of his last string quartet. The work has that old-style Russian melancholy and autumnal spirit that is quite powerful and the Pacifica makes a splendid case for it.

This is a marvelous beginning to what promises to be a terrific Shostakovich cycle with the value-added pleasure of music by his lesser-known contemporaries. The Cedille engineers have outdone themselves with strikingly vivid sound quality. The cover art, a reproduction of a 1931 Soviet propaganda poster, compliments the entire production brilliantly.

Unlike his symphonies, the string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich were not evenly distributed over his career; all but two date from after World War II. Shostakovich turned in earnest to the genre during his years of conflict with Soviet authorities, and they are remarkable documents of one of the greatest and most universal themes of his music, the experience of being forced to become inward. The String Quartet No. 5 in B flat, Op. 92, was written for a small group of Shostakovich's associates shortly after his denunciation by Stalin's cultural commissars; it was not intended for public performance. Significantly, it introduces the signature D-S-C-H motif that runs like a thread through the composer's later music. The other three Shostakovich quartets here appeared under more favorable circumstances, but the String Quartet No. 6 in G major, Op. 101, and String Quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor, Op. 108, are cut from the same cloth as the earlier work; all have deeply despondent slow movements and outer movements in which melodic ideas seem to fragment or be challenged by an implacable force. The odd work out here is the String Quartet No. 8 in D minor, Op. 110, which is well known in a string orchestra arrangement by Rudolf Barshai. The work was dedicated to the victims of fascism and war, but annotator William Hussey suggests that the dedication was added by others and that the sense of tragedy in the work was more personal, having to do with the composer's depression over having been pressured to join the Communist Party. In either event, it is a more outward kind of work, and the Pacifica Quartet's tough intensity serves it particularly well. The String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, Op. 86, of Nikolai Miaskovsky was composed at the height of the Stalinist restrictions in 1950 and helps put the Shostakovich pieces in context; it is an explicitly Romantic work. The Pacifica Quartet, based at the University of Illinois, is sometimes a bit stiff in Shostakovich's more vernacular melodies, but they get the basic emotional qualities of the work very well, and there's nothing to fault in their ensemble work. These quartets benefit from being heard in groups like this, where Shostakovich's various approaches to his interior dialogue can be compared, and this is overall a very moving set.