Boris Papandopulo (1906-1991)
String Quartet No.1, Op.7 (1924)
String Quartet No.2, Op.20 (1930-32)
String Quartet No.3, Op.136 ‘Folk’ (1945)
String Quartet No.5 (1970)
String Quartet No.6 (1983)
A Song of Peace and Freedom Sounded Out
Quintet for clarinet and string quartet, Op.90 (1940)
Quartet for guitar and string trio (1977)
Sebastian String Quartet
Davorin Brozić (clarinet), Krešimir Bedek (guitar)
rec. 2017-22, Zagreb, Croatia
cpo 555 469-2 [3 CDs: 179]
My last review of the music of Boris Papandopulo was a concerto diptych back in 2017 (review) but here is a 3-CD set of his complete string quartets (of completeness, more in a moment) along with a Guitar Quartet and Clarinet Quintet.
The works in the set were composed over a near sixty-year period but no matter how advanced the idiom he adopted, folklore was never entirely absent from his musical vocabulary and he remained a zestful exponent of it throughout his life. In my previous review I termed his music ‘full of infectious rhythmic brio and exciting melodic and lyric panache’ and that’s pretty much it.
His First Quartet, Op.7 dates from 1924 when he was no more than 18. It’s a rich juicy slab of Croatian neo-nationalism, a sizzling steak of vibrant folklore. Use of the kolo folk dance is pervasive – it obsessed him his entire life and recurs throughout much of his music. In the central Interludium there’s forlorn material, some archaic-sounding, some sweetly lyric yet urgent. Sonority and colour are used with painterly extravagance and he ends this first quartet with a crisp March. The Op.20 Second Quartet’s score has been lost but was reconstructed from the surviving parts by Felix Spiller. It dates from 1930 or ’32 and shows some revealing touches of the influence of Bartók. Its large-scale opening is a strong sonata form construction again sporting a kolo and one also feels how adept he has become at transitions and at preparing for new movements via sudden gestures. The Scherzo is based on a Serbian folk song, the unequal length of which causes entertaining moments of destabilisation whereas the meditative polyphonic slow movement has the occasional juddering outburst. The ebullience of the finale is enhanced through the use of a fugato.
Quartet No.3, Op.126 dates from 1945 and is subtitled ‘Folk’. Here the writing is very slightly more domesticated and more compressed with less youthful sprawl. The second movement Round Dance generates Scherzo-like energy whilst the ensuing Fiddler Song has the most pronounced quotient of folkloric influence in its use of a village fiddler’s evocative exploration of barely suppressed grief. The Dance finale sweeps all sadness aside in fugal, flighty fashion. I mentioned completeness in the first paragraph and that relates to Quartet No.4 which is lost but No.5 is extant and was composed in 1970. Here we feel the lure of twelve-tone elements but also present is Papandopulo’s need for colour and rhythmic zest which softens the more abrasive elements of the material. In any case the kolo is not long delayed appearing in the oscillating slow movement. There is some Stravinsky behind the scherzo and some improvisatory-sounding quasi-grotesque moments in the fifth movement. The notes suggest this might be the composer cocking a snook at party line composition but it’s hard to tell. The finale’s fugal again, occasionally curt but has a fragmentary, kaleidoscopic quality to it. One feels the composer making his accommodation with prevailing orthodoxies in this quartet but never able to quite submerge his natural capriciousness or belief in the native soil.
Well over a decade later, in 1983, came Quartet No.6 that once again conforms to the composer’s favoured four-movement form, one that gives him opportunities for maximum contrast between movements. There’s some arresting alacrity in the crisp Stravinskian opening, some ripely melancholic paragraphs in the slow movement which is just noted by a tempo indication. It’s unusual for him to be so emotionally direct, where normally gravity is offset by some sense of energetic caprice. The following stern March has hints of a Tarantella and its rhythmic impetus prepares one for the finale, a slow smooth introduction to which is impregnated by Lighter elements, though they turn into a chorale, charming and generous-minded. A Song of Peace and Freedom Sounded Out is a brief, six-minute single-movement that has some fun playing around with the Internationale, as a kind of fanciful variations on the theme.
The Clarinet Quintet, Op.90 dates from 1940, a large 38-minute work once again cast in regulation four movements. It was published with 500 bars cut, presumably to make it both shorter and more programmable but those missing bars have been restored for this recording. There’s much mellifluous cantabile before a trademark folkloric acceleration, the clarinet leading with swoops and trills and rich elegance. Again, Papandopulo favours March themes. The slow movement offers a soliloquy with rich elegiac tones, then a freewheeling frolic of a kolo before a tense March recurs in the finale ending the work uneasily. Finally, there’s the Quartet for Guitar and string trio, from 1977 which soon digs into some Bosnian folklore, tangy and driving. It’s inevitable, perhaps, that the writing is more athletic and aggressive than in the companion much earlier Clarinet. One finds here a familiar meditative slow movement, where the guitar is offered more chordal opportunities and is more florid with hints of a Renaissance ethos, as well as a contemporary sense of colour. The composer is clever enough to imply both. The exciting Tarantella finale will remind listeners of the March in Quartet 6 that also explores the rhythmic potential of the Tarantella. It’s fitting that the work and this collection ends with the avuncular colour-saturation and vivid rhythmic vitality of that Tarantella finale.
These recordings were made over a five-year period in Zagreb, and elsewhere, in several different locations. The hall of the Academy of Music in the capital is very resonant but the church and monastery halls are rather better though I must stress this didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the First and Third Quartets in any way. The Sebastian Quartet are splendid ambassadors for the music, pungent but never ragged and sensitive without overdoing things. They strike a perfect balance and always seem to get to the heart of the quartets and other works. Their confreres, Davorin Brozić (clarinet) and Krešimir Bedek (guitar), are both admirable.
If you’ve ever come across the music of Papandopulo’s near contemporaries, Jakov Gotovac and Marko Tajčević, recorded back in the 1950s by Decca on a trip to Zagreb, you’ll know something of what to expect – vitalising, folkloric colour and invention but without shallowness and in later years a good, albeit slightly uneasy accommodation with twelve-tone and Stravinsky. Too much of a good thing? Too much folklore, too much kolo? Not for me.
Jonathan Woolf
Help us financially by purchasing from
