DSCH 17 Shostakovich CD Reviews - Amir & Brodsky Quartet

Amir
Duets: Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano (arrangements by Atovmyan of Prelude from The Gadfly, Gavotte and Elegy from The Human Comedy, Waltz from ?, Polka from The Limpid Stream)[a] plus Spanish Dance from The Gadfly Suite, op. 97a (arranged for two violins and piano by Atovmyan)[b]; Wieniawski: Polonaise No. 1 in D major, op. 4[c]; Tchaikovsky: Mélodie in Eb, No. 3 from Souvenir d'un lieu cher, op. 42[d]; Vieuxtemps: Tarantelle[e]; Nathan Milstein: Paganiniana Variations[f]; Paganini: La Clochette, op. 7 (arranged for violin and piano by Kreisler)[g]; Prokofiev: March from Love for Three Oranges, op. 33[h]; Charles-Auguste de Bériot: First movement of Duo No. 3 from 3 Concertante duets, op. 57[i]; Yevgeny Brusilovsky (printed Evgeniy Brusilovski): Boz Aygir (The Wild Horse)[j]; Grazyna Bacewicz: Latwe duety na tematy ludowe (Easy Duets on Folk Themes - listed as Folk Dances)[k].
Amir (violin), Marat Bisengaliev (violin)[a,b,i,k], John Lenehan (piano)[a-e,g,h,j].
Black Box BBM1042. DDD. TT 55:24.
Recorded Potton Hall, Suffolk, 26 - 27 November 1999 and 29 February 2000.
[a,b]World premiere recording of arrangements.
[j,k]World premiere recordings.

Two Pieces (Prelude and Scherzo) for String Octet, op. 11 (incorrectly printed op. 1 no. 1)[a]; Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57[b]; Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano[c]; Two Pieces (Elegy - Adagio and Polka - Allegretto) for String Quartet, sans op. D[d].
Brodsky Quartet[a,b,d]: Andrew Haveron (violin 1)[c], Ian Belton (violin 2)[c], Paul Cassidy (viola), Jacqueline Thomas (cello); Jacqueline Shave (violin)[a], Roy Theaker (violin)[a], Jane Atkins (viola)[a], Alexander Baillie (cello)[a], Christian Blackshaw (piano)[b,c].
Challenge Classics CC 72093. DDD. TT 61:22.
Recorded Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, U.K., 5 - 7 March 2001.

The common work on these two discs, Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano, is another of Lev Atovmyan's ubiquitous arrangements of excerpts from Shostakovich's stage and film scores. Thanks to industrious arrangers - not to mention the composer himself - the tunes found in second-hand suites like this metastasise throughout Shostakovich's musical catalogue, inflicting chronic headaches on annotators. In this case, errors have crept into the documentation provided by the score's publisher, Musikverlag Hans Sikorski, and some of these are repeated in Challenge Classics' notes (Black Box avoid the problem by providing no commentary on this music whatsoever).

Ronald Vermeulen's CD notes for Challenge Classics are accurate for the romantic Prelude that opens the suite, which many will recognise from No.7, Introduction, in Atovmyan's familiar orchestral suite from The Gadfly, op. 97a. As Derek Hulme (compiler of the upcoming third edition of the Shostakovich catalogue) has pointed out to me, this movement in Five Pieces is actually taken straight from No. 15, Guitars, of Shostakovich's original score of The Gadfly, and does not incorporate elements of its fifth number, Confession, which Atovmyan deployed in No. 7 of his op. 97a.

The notes also correctly assign the perky Gavotte to The Human Comedy incidental music, wherein it is No. 18. This is recycled as the second number in Ballet Suite No. 3, another Atovmyan project.

The final movement, a sprightly Polka, comes from The Limpid Stream, as advertised. There it is No. 12, Dance of the Milkmaid and the Tractor Driver, though it is more often encountered as No. 4 in Ballet Suite No. 1.

The third and fourth Pieces, however, are misattributed. Vermeulen copies Sikorski in assigning paternity for the lilting third movement, Elegy, to The Limpid Stream, op. 39. Not so! This originated as The Panorama of Paris theme from The Human Comedy, op. 37, and does not appear in The Limpid Stream. Sikorski do, however, correctly report that Elegy was also arranged as No. 4 in Ballet Suite No. 3.

The fourth movement, an aristocratic Waltz, is more problematic, for despite what Sikorski and Vermeulen state, this does not derive from Shostakovich's score to the animated film The Tale of the Priest and His Servant Balda. Whence it does originate remains a mystery to me. Louis Blois and Derek Hulme recognised the music as the fifth item in a solo-piano compilation published by Schirmer as Shostakovich: Easy Pieces for the Piano and by Sikorski as Karussell der Tänze (Roundabout of Dances). Mr. Hulme suggests that it may also be a number from Atovmyan's Choreographic Miniatures ballet suite. Unfortunately, the Shostakovich score that Atovmyan mined for all these arrangements remains elusive.

To make even more of a molehill out of this ant-heap, Five Piece's Prelude and Gavotte turn up in the same instrumentation in Konstantin Fortunatov's Three Violin Duets (Fortunatov's third Duet, a Waltz from the Maxim trilogy, does not feature among Atovmyan's Five Pieces). Although, as compiler, Fortunatov is usually credited for Three Violin Duets, in fact the arrangements are Atovmyan's, and Prelude and Gavotte are scored identically in Three Violin Duets and Five Pieces.

The first and most prominent recording of Three Violin Duets was on an EMI album that earned a 1980 Grammy Award in the Chamber Music category for Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Samuel Sanders. This recording is currently available in EMI's Matrix reissue series, accompanied by its original disc-mate, Prokofiev's Sonata for Two Violins, plus a sparkling rendition of Bartók's Forty-four Violin Duos (EMI 7243 5 65994 2 0).

There is little basis on which to choose between the Prelude from Perlman et al. and the one from the Brodsky Quartet's violinists with British pianist Christian Blackshaw. A melancholy reverie lounges in both. In contrast, Amir (he goes by this name only), Marat Bisengaliev and John Lenehan sound more syrupy than either rival, and cannot resist taking the Poco piu mosso marking on the central section as licence to twirl gymnastically.

The Gavotte on Challenge Classics is 1.4 times faster, and proportionally less stilted, than the one on Matrix, which purveys a more ponderous brand of merriment. Black Box's Gavotte is livelier still. The Brodsky players proffer crisper articulation than do Amir and his partners, who prefer a less formal dance.

The remaining three Pieces leave only two competitors, and continue to show Amir, Bisengaliev and Lenehan as supple; Haveron, Belton and Blackshaw as refined. The latter play Elegy with touching gentleness, while the former are more impassioned - Black Box's intimate recording catches some loud inhalations here, but I cannot say I find these objectionable.

The temper of that obscure Waltz is not as subdued as suggested by its title in the solo-piano score, Waltz of Remembrance. Devoid of sardonic wit, this is unlike Shostakovich's other visits to the genre, instead comporting itself with fin de siecle grace. Amir and Co. luxuriate in its textures, investing 2:05 in material that their more elegant counterparts grant just 1:47. Lenehan is less prominent than Blackshaw in this movement, following the freer rhythm of his partners rather than marking the beat as Blackshaw does.

In the fifth Piece, Polka, the Black Box team are more vibrant, the two violinists sounding like gypsy fiddlers. On Challenge Classics, this movement has a salon atmosphere.

The positions of the Polka and Elegy are reversed on Black Box, presumably to avoid having the Spanish Dance from The Gadfly - not a member of Five Pieces and not included on Challenge Classics - follow another fast movement. This familiar number (a.k.a. Folk Festival, Tarantella and a handful of other noms de guerre) seems slightly awkward in this dress, but it is played with all possible exuberance.

Amir presents the first recording of Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano. This is also the premiere recording of Atovmyan's instrumentation for the same forces of Spanish Dance. You would not, however, learn this from Black Box's vestigial booklet notes, which title all six pieces "Duets" and offer no information on the sources of these tunes or even who arranged them.

Even more unjustly, the only credit paid to John Lenehan - accomplished British concert pianist, recording artist, teacher, arranger and composer - for his sterling support throughout this programme is his name on the back of the jewel case. The booklet does not once mention his name, much less tell us anything about his career. Amir's second violinist - and uncle - Marat Bisengaliev gets two sentences.

Nevertheless, if the present performances are anything to go by, it isn't empty hyperbole when the same notes proclaim Amir, just thirteen at the time of these recordings, as "one of the most profoundly gifted young artists to have emerged in recent years." In the five encore staples he has chosen to lead off his first recording, the Kazakh violinist displays a magnetic, communicative virtuosity. As breathtaking as is his technique, he is always engaging of the listener, never aloof.

And, heavens, how he conveys his sheer delight at playing! Just listen to his eager anticipation of the final reprise of the main subject of the March from Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges. (I'm uncertain who or what makes the squeaky background noises in the first three seconds of this track, but they are instantly forgotten.)

The remainder of Amir consists of less challenging but still enjoyable miniatures of some rarity. Charles-Auguste de Bériot, 19th century violinist and author of a number of didactic compositions, contributes a guilelessly Schubertian - and infrequently recorded - movement, treated touchingly by Amir and Bisengaliev.

Black Box miss two more opportunities to flag world premiere recordings on Amir. Yevgeny Brusilovsky (1905 - 1981), founder of the Kazakh Opera House and co-composer of the national anthem of Kazakhstan, gives us the bouncing Boz Aygir (The Wild Horse), whose simple travelling motif does indeed conjure up the image of an unbroken stallion galloping across the Central Asian steppes. At under two minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome or outlast Amir and Lenehan's enthusiasm.

Also new to disc is Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz's Easy Duets on Folk Themes, a pedagogical work for two violins from 1945, consisting of seven movements, none of which exceed a minute and a half. The suite opens with the accordion-like drone of Preludium, an obvious exercise in double-stopping that nevertheless manages to be harmonically intriguing. This makes way for a conventionally folk-dance-inspired Cracovienne, followed by an insomniac Nocturne. At the suite's heart lies the mysterious Kujawiak (a stately Polish dance from the Kujawy region), whose foreground undulates hypnotically while the background line practices (in sequence) trills, pizzicati and double-stopping. At the end of the lesson, both violinists break the obsessive mood with a boisterous flourish. Another, more spiky Cracovienne is succeeded by a pessimistic Song, and the work concludes with the vaguely Coplandesque Grotesque March.

No premieres lurk among the remaining works on the Brodskys' all-Shostakovich programme, but we are treated to a very fine performance indeed of the youthful Two Pieces for String Octet. Its Prelude opens with dreamy sloth, transitions through a light and flitting central section, and ends in a disquietingly murky reprise of the opening material. Then comes a Scherzo that is more psychedelic than virtuosic, wringing some ugly sounds from the violins. This approach makes the work feel more consequential than did the ARCO Chamber Orchestra's version, reviewed in our last issue, desirable though that remains (Phoenix PHCD 151).

This Piano Quintet is relatively expansive, though not to the uncharacteristically extreme extent of Shostakovich's 1940 recording with the Beethoven Quartet, which lasts three minutes longer overall (Lys 369-370; deleted). Here a gloomy Prelude is followed by a subdued and tentative Fugue. The sensation of withdrawing into isolation is amplified by the spacious acoustics, which impart a delayed reverberation to the piano.

The Scherzo is sly and full of character, while the nostalgic Intermezzo is lighter than in the Esbjerg Ensemble's reading (Classico CLASSCD 273; reviewed in DSCH No. 13). In comparison with theirs, the Brodskys' Finale also wears a sunnier disposition throughout.

Though I prefer the Esbjergs' dark portrayal of the entire work, much preparation and thought have obviously been invested in this new entry, and its refinement is artistically consistent with the rest of the programme.

Still, no modern version is nearly as transfixing as the composer's own 1955 recording with the Beethoven Quartet, a reading of striking immediacy, pregnant with momentum in the Prelude, keenly grief-stricken in the Fugue, irresistibly vigorous in the Scherzo, insupportably despondent in the Intermezzo, extroverted in the Finale (Vanguard Classics OVC 8077).

The final work from the Brodskys is Two Pieces for String Quartet, a project that occupied Shostakovich only over Halloween night of 1931. The Adagio derives from Act I of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, on which he was working at the time, and the Allegretto is the Polka from The Age of Gold. I find this to be slightly underplayed - too much restraint in the Adagio, insufficient impetus in the Polka - but not enough to hobble the disc as a whole.

Shostakovich completists will want to have at least one of these recordings of Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano; although all of the movements are light, and four of the five are available in other instrumentations, this currently seems to be the only format in which to hear the Waltz of Remembrance.

So, whose version to select? To crib a phrase or two from Black Box, Amir's "open expressivity" stands "in marked contrast to the cooler and more restrained style" of the Brodsky players. If this is insufficient basis on which to choose, the very different couplings should decide the matter.

W. Mark Roberts
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