String Quartet No. 3, op. 73; String Quartet No. 4, op. 83; Prelude No. 17 from Twenty-four Preludes, op. 34. Chamber arrangements for strings of all works by Mikhail Turich.
Mikhail Turich, Novosibirsk Chamber Orchestra.
Beaux BEA 2022. DDD. TT 59:12.
Recording locations and dates unspecified (©2000).
World premiere recordings of arrangements.

Time was when one, and only one, of Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets was scored for a larger ensemble - the Eighth. Today, its title of Chamber Symphony may be shared. Over the past decade, more than half of this canon has been scored for one or another ensemble of instruments, with varying success. If the purpose of these arrangements is to produce an altered and enhanced perception of the music, then Mikhail Turich and his Novosibirsk ensemble have scored one of those rare and subtle victories in this specialised undertaking.

Though arrangements of both the Third and Fourth Quartets have appeared in the past, their suitability to expanded scale has never been as revealing as in the current release. Composed respectively in 1946 and 1949, these quartets are part of the late- and post-War grouping of chamber works that includes the Second Quartet and Second Piano Trio. The Third Quartet, with its vividly contrasting movements and gestures of anguish, offers an in-the-moment response to the War's aftermath; the more subdued, nostalgia-tinged Fourth Quartet is more of an internalised reflection.

In a sense, the quartets parallel the psychological and emotional content of the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, respectively (though each lags behind its "companion symphony" by a number of years). In addition, the hefty thematic material in the Third Quartet bears resemblance to themes that appear in Shostakovich's symphonic works of the time. It is perhaps little surprise that both quartets work so well in their new, enlarged settings.

Accounting for this success is the remarkable synergy that exists between performance and arrangement. At times, it is difficult to tell how much of what works is due to which element. On the performance side, the Novosibirsk ensemble boast a highly disciplined manoeuvrability. With a preference for brisk tempi, Turich elicits from them a fantastic, turn-on-a-dime spontaneity and the kind of detailed interpretive shape that one usually finds with four players. Turich has the notes so well in hand, in fact, that one can favourably compare these performances to those of the original versions by the Borodin or Beethoven Quartets.

Listeners will truly hear these works anew. The aggressive muscle and explosive agitation in the second and third movements of Quartet No. 3 take on fresh levels of intensity. The dotted rhythms and parallel octaves of the Adagio assume a weightiness appropriate to their grief. At the same time, the ensemble have no difficulty maintaining lightness and buoyancy, as in the second movement's jaunty staccato theme, and delicacy when needed, as in the final movement's pizzicato-accompanied arioso.

Throughout the Fourth Quartet, Turich is in touch with the pathos that lies beneath each note. The broadly sustained sonorities of the opening pages seem all the more fitting in their larger setting. The ever-diminishing dynamics that characterise this movement, with their shifting focus from collective to individual voices, lose none of their poignancy. Likewise, the varying moods and contours of the final movement take on a fuller dimension as it steers its elliptical, yet lyrically gripping course from bouncy little polka to tentatively triumphant climax to final melancholic reverberations.

On the matter of the arrangements themselves, the scoring is never heavy-handed and avoids the excessive weight of symphonic proportion that has characterised previous re-instrumentations of the same works. This and the restriction to stringed instruments are keys to their success. The scoring also exploits an exceptionally wide range of string colouration. The inclusion of double basses adds a wonderfully dark reinforcement that is well absorbed into the ensemble. The moping cello solo at the beginning of the final movement in No. 3 is given over to solo double bass, as is another cello solo in the finale of No. 4, both with good effects. In other places, the arrangement wisely preserves the various solo passages that appear throughout both quartets, so that they stand out in relief as they would in the original. "Public" and "private" attributes are thus well negotiated.

If there is one place where the arrangement loses a thing or two in the translation, it is in the lyrical slow movement of No. 4. Nothing captures the heartfelt grief of this movement more intimately than the original set of four players. Yet even in its expansion, the music takes on a character of its own, at times recalling the composer's string writing in the Largo of the Eighth Symphony.

Mikhail Turich's adaptations differ from Rudolph Barshai's arrangements of the same works that have appeared on at least three previous recordings, including a 1992 Deutsche Grammophon release conducted by Barshai himself (435 386-2; deleted). The current versions, as mentioned, are for strings only, while Barshai's scorings include strings, woodwinds and brass, and in the case of the Fourth Quartet, percussion. While they are blended in a fairly standard, homogeneous fashion, I have always found the presence of non-stringed instruments in Barshai's arrangements to be at odds with the original instrumental conception. They do have their moments, such as the sensitive wind solos in the slow movement of Quartet No. 4. Otherwise, these arrangements have always remained a curiosity.

Barshai's versions also seem to require a larger number of instruments, both strings and non-strings, so that as an ensemble they lack the agility and tight manoeuvrability of the smaller Novosibirsk group. In the vigorously contrapuntal climax of the opening movement of the Third Quartet, for example, Barshai's winds tend to hamper the reactivity of the close phrasing which is otherwise handled with impressive dexterity by Turich's string ensemble.

The disc is filled out with a string setting of one of the syrupy little trifles from the opus 34 Preludes for piano, presumably to push the total timing closer to the 60-minute mark. Would that Turich had chosen a more substantial target from the opus 87 Preludes and Fugues!

The sound engineering is superb. The ambience, appropriately, is that of a small venue rather than the large hall acoustics of the Barshai recording. The microphones place the listener at a most strategic location, on the podium itself, so that each string group is distinctly sectionalised and at the same time suitably blended. The clarity and vividness that result are ideally matched to this engaging music.

Turich and his ensemble have elevated the performing status of these string quartets with distinction. This album is a winner straight down the line.

Louis Blois
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DSCH No. 17.
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