ECM are also the source of yet another new recording of the ubiquitous Eighth Quartet in its original formulation. This was released in Europe in 1997, but will not be available in North America until 14 July of this year.

The accompanying interview with the players hints at disagreement over the importance to performance of considering the circumstances surrounding the composition of Shostakovich's music. Cellist Anja Lechner opines, "We are interested in the music, above all, knowing about all those extra-musical correlations does not really make a difference," whereas first violinist Andreas Reiner contends, "Every available piece of information on the composer, his environment and work are of essential interest. .... [To] understand how drastic and urgent these characterisations are supposed to be can certainly require extra-musical knowledge." He too feels, however, that the Eighth Quartet needs no special background knowledge to have a strong emotional impact.

True enough, yet emotional impact is conspicuously absent from this performance. The Rosamunde Quartet have fine rhythm, but their playing is under-characterised. The first movement is curiously untroubled, while the second is energetic enough but lacks teeth. The central sections sound aimless, and although a glimmer of connection appears towards the end of the quartet, it's too little too late. None of this is helped by the harshly analytical recording, which imparts an annoying metallic fizz to the cello line in moments of duress. Even were the field not so impossibly competitive as it is, this would not be a recommendable performance.

The première recording of the Burian work, on the other hand, is a real discovery. Those who respond to the Shostakovich quartets will find a kindred spirit here. Considering the convergences between the lives of the two composers, this is unsurprising. Emil František Burian was an artistic wunderkind, of eclectic talents and interests, as well as being a Communist in Czechoslovakia when it was dangerous to be one rather than to not. When Shostakovich's friend and theatrical collaborator Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested by Stalin's goons, Burian played on his leftist credentials and wrote to Stalin to plead, unsuccessfully, for Meyerhold's release. Tables turned during the war, when the Gestapo arrested Burian and destroyed all of his scores that they could find. Burian suffered four years of internment and torture in German concentration camps. It is probable that the hollowness lurking throughout his Fourth Quartet, written in 1947, can be traced to his unimaginable wartime experiences.

This quartet is not, however, primarily distressed in the manner of Shostakovich's Eighth. Instead, what impresses on first hearing is the remarkable variety of textures and styles. The mood of the first movement is generally dark and mystical, while the Impressionistically coloured second is questing. The third movement is a driving Scherzo underpinned by an ostinato on the cello, and the fourth is a summation that convincingly integrates what has gone before without resolving it. Within each of the four movements, Burian's style swings back and forth from sparse, static gestures vaguely reminiscent of late Shostakovich to the kind of unsteady Romanticism one hears in pre-atonal Schoenberg.

Webern's sticky-sweet Langsamer Satz is a strange choice to make up a threesome on this disc and does little to rectify the stinginess of the total playing time. Reiner suggests, "All three works are monothematically structured and end in dissolution, like the extinguishing of a candle." The link seems pretty thin to me, but the Webern is played with affection. Still, with a half-hour of spare room on the CD, and with no other Burian works listed in the Schwann catalogue, it is a very great pity that another of his quartets was not included.

W. Mark Roberts
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