Shostakovich: The String Quartets - Fitzwilliam String Quartet (6CD-Box, 1998). Sealed.
Description
The Fitzwilliam Quartet is English by birth but shows a lot of Russian soul in these works, which were recorded in consultation with the composer. Their technique is flawless, their immersion in the music total, their interaction with one another and with the music spontaneous and intense. Priced competitively with the Borodin Quartet, they do not have any added attraction to match the Piano Quintet in that set, but this close-up stereo recording is significantly better. Highlights of the set include the relaxed, folk-flavoured No. 1; the tense, autobiographical No. 8, which recalls the terrors of World War II, quotes a lot of Shostakovich's earlier works, and mourns for the "victims of fascism and war"; the contrasts of quiet beauty and fierce intensity in No. 10; and the bold structure of No. 15, Shostakovich's last quartet, in which he looks at death, steadily and without blinking. --Joe McLellan
Product Description
The Fitzwilliam String Quartet performs Shostakovich's complete String Quartets. "Wonderful music the performances by the Fitzwilliam Quartet reach the heart of the composer's intentions"- Gramophone.
REVIEWS
Exquisitely played - not for the morally indifferent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2006
For those who have ears to hear, these pieces tell the tale of a man who had hope, dignity and the possibility of joy crushed out of him by the years of Stalin's terror, and then by the siege of Leningrad. While he was obliged to compromise some of his public large scale music in the name of socialist-realism, simply in order to survive as Stalin's pet composer, he managed somehow to preserve the highest degree of artistic integrity for his chamber music.
For me, the special quality of the Fitzwilliam's performance is that they are transparent with regard to the composer's original intentions. The beautiful parts are played beautifully, the furious parts furiously, but all the parts are bought into an integrated whole that you can't help but feel would have satisfied the old man tremendously. I have heard various other performers attempt these works, with more or less success, but it seems that they always come with baggage and an agenda to press. The Borodins play-up the Russianism, the Kronos overdo the modernism, etc.
As for the quartets themselves none of them are minor in their scope or ambition. They all have something quite specific to say about the nature of human existence and folly, as masses and as individuals. There are brief moments, more perhaps towards the later quartets, where bitterness and dark intimations of mortality give way to a peaceful acceptance, but always briefly and provisionally. There are no happy endings, only surrender to the inevitable, alone in the knowledge of the truth of what we are and what we have been.
I could perhaps talk about the quartets one by one, but all are deep and wide enough that one's comprehension of each must grow indefinitely with repeated listening. Left alone with these disks on a desert island a true music lover would never be bored, but they might need to dash their own brains out with a coconut for light relief.
Amazing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 January 2014
These quartets are played by the Fitzwilliam Quartet who are greatly admired by Shostakovich himself. He wrote to them personally in 1972 to thank them for their performance of his 13th quartet at York University.
Brilliant performances and recording
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 October 2016
The perfect means to explore these fascinating works, the greatest quartet cycle of the 20th century.
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