Quartetto Noûs’s Shostakovich – a more detailed appraisal
by Alan George

I should acknowledge straight away that I have myself been associated with most of these works for over fifty years, as violist of the Fitzwilliam String Quartet (FSQ). Indeed, we played some of this music to the composer himself, and gave the Western premieres of the last three quartets (a fuller account of all this can be found in my Writings page on this website). Whether or not it is ethical for me to judge others’ performances in a public domain is therefore debatable; similarly, whether any of the above connections lends me any more authority than anyone else. I can only reassure readers that, in these or any circumstances, I would always treat colleagues not as competitors, but with sincere respect; and that whatever I may have to say in response to these recordings, the intention here is to present an honest account – rather than any personal opinion– of what I have heard.

I have to confess, I had not come across Quartetto Noûs before – and have been seriously impressed. They all play their instruments supremely well, to a technical level which would have been the envy of the four of us in our early days. Thus have standards changed over the decades! However, I did know Quartetto di Cremona, from talks I gave some years ago at the Trasimeno Festival in Magione: I particularly remember a magnificent performance of the Franck Piano Quintet (with Angela Hewitt). Indeed, we read that the older group were early mentors of the Noûs, at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona. They have now recorded, to considerable acclaim, virtually all Shostakovich’s available quartet music (only the “Unfinished Quartet” – a realisation of an earlier version of the Ninth – appears to be missing). So I approached this set with enthusiastic anticipation, as to what they might bring to such ground breaking repertoire……..

In the first instance, that proves to be a beautifully warm, heartfelt sound, with commendably contained vibrato and control of legato bow strokes – entirely appropriate for the opening of No.1: a strangely elusive piece, given its extraordinary simplicity. Maybe that’s the problem, in that too often we hear groups trying to “do something” with it – and thereby managing only to get in the way. On the other hand, simply to play the dots on the page won’t do either! The Noûs fall into neither of these traps, setting off at exactly the broad tempo the composer asks for – where others seemingly don’t believe in it. Likewise the next movement: also marked Moderato, and with precisely the same metronome mark (but entirely different character): even if one mistrusts those notional numbers, surely we must observe the relationship between them?! Violist Sara Dambruoso gets this just right – together with an awareness that next time round she will be joined by a gentle marching pizzicato bass. The fleet, shadowy scherzo is thrown off with panache and (an appropriately subdued) brilliance – as also is the crazily buoyant and witty finale.

A particularly fine performance of No.1, for which they are to be congratulated – especially for not underestimating this paradoxically slight work. It really is not that: Maxim Shostakovich once said to us, the FSQ, that “my father spoke in opposites”. So, is this a world beating performance? Well, not quite: there are just a few little quibbles to mention in passing – although I’m bound to say they are mostly a matter of taste. For example, a couple of tiny ritardandi creep in here and there – like four bars after fig 1 (0:29), and similarly before fig 6 (1:44, where a three-bar phrase in the viola has in effect created a quasi rit already!). Many modern musicians do such things, and of course it’s fine to “turn corners” in a manner helpful to the listener’s awareness of structure. My only point is that when he wants a ritardando Shostakovich invariably notates one – and in any case he tended not to allow himself “indulgences” in his own performances: I assume the Noûs players will have acquainted themselves with his legacy of recordings – although I’ve also acknowledged elsewhere on this site that “Opinions may be divided as to the value of any composer’s renditions of his/her own music”. More importantly, I found increasingly during these discs that they don’t always go far enough in their exploitation of all the pianissimi, which are so much an integral part of this composer’s palette (no less so than in Beethoven or Schubert). I’ve already become a big fan of Ms Dambruoso’s viola playing! But she might have resisted an intrusive “comma” after the first beat of the bar before fig 4 (1:14), and been more secretive with her repeated quavers, introducing the smokey texture of the second subject. Playing so softly does involve risk, of course – not least at the very end of the next movement; or in the gently lilting “trio” section of the third (I noted that we in the FSQ also did not play anything like pp enough here, back in 1977!); then in the finale, there is virtually no difference in dynamic or colour between figs 69 and 70 (2:21 – 2:30). Such details could have transformed an extremely accomplished reading of No.1 into a great one!

The two early pieces (since awarded “Op.36a”, I’ve learned) preceded the First Quartet proper by seven years, yet did not come to light until the mid 1980s – when the Fitzwilliam was quickly sent hand copied material by VAAP (the USSR State Copyright Agency in Moscow). They too are given extremely persuasive performances by the Noûs players – and of those for string octet as well, to the extent that the group seems to identify with the Shostakovich of the 1930s in a truly special way. I did spot a further comma, this into fig 7 (2:10) of the Elegy: it does interrupt a natural perfect cadence, however much it may have facilitated a transition out of tremolando bowing; yet is perhaps justified through their capturing of the ensuing dreamy backcloth to perfection – as they also achieve with the Gymnopédie-like accompaniment at the very opening. I’ve not heard a better account of this haunting piece. The young (somewhat inexperienced) composer asks a bit too much of our plucking fingers in the Polka: there is no way we can play the notes as fast as the original xylophone, and these players sensibly find a tempo which is both practical and effective. Maxim Dmitrievich’s own recording of his father’s witty little number (extracted from the ballet The Age of Gold) seems to have set certain performance traditions, not all of which the Noûs follows – but this is surely a piece which offers licence for everyone to make their own!

The two Octet movements were the most substantial product of Shostakovich’s earliest years – composed separately but published together. Although chamber music by definition, they are conceived on an almost orchestral scale – shades of Mendelssohn’s entreaty that his Octet should be “played by all the instruments in symphonic orchestral style” (there is indeed an augmented version of the present Op.11 for string orchestra). As with the more famous Symphony No.1, they were written while Shostakovich was still a teenage student at the Leningrad Conservatoire: the Prelude (in D minor) dating from December 1924, with the G minor scherzo following seven months later. Even if no ensemble could ever quite match a live 1980s London performance (recorded by the BBC) from the Borodin Quartet in their Kopelman era, these eight players come close! The Quartetto di Cremona support their protegés admirably and wholeheartedly, and they all rise to each challenge thrown at them by this prodigious teenager. I only wish his entreaty for ppp, immediately after the declamatory beginning of the Preludio, could have been observed with more imagination and daring – and similarly so with the ethereal texture which closes this extraordinary piece. Minor nit-picking aside, there is no doubt that the wickedly dissonant Scherzo, in the hands of these brilliant players, thrillingly brings the first of the two CDs to a hair-raising end!

I love the way Sara Dambruoso plays the opening of No.13 – which must be one of the composer’s most original and most disturbing compositions (I found myself wishing I too could somehow have found a sound as ideal for this profoundly expressive 12-note row as she surely does). Her colleagues then steal in with appropriate sorrowfulness – although older generations of Russians did give us a more inward depth of sound here; likewise, a more dark vibrancy for the “second subject” (fig 4, 2:20). I wasn’t nearly as terrified as I should be by the first screaming outburst (fig 6, 3:23); but the wind-down to the Doppio movimento is well judged.  

Thereafter, I feel I can only make minor observations – in the context of the personal statement made at the outset of this review. For example, by this point in the work I was feeling troubled by a habit which had already crept in: that of cutting notes – and especially rests – short of their full value: crucially, the first violinist does not wait for her colleagues’ 6-beat diminuendo to reach its appropriate level, before entering at fig 10 (5:26) with that characteristic tapping rhythm. This mesmerising passage looks as nothing on the page – and can sound it if the lower three players in particular haven’t found the appropriately subterranean pianissimo demanded of the musical context. Could the crescendo into fig 14 (6:19) have been more explosive? In this next raging passage the composer marks no bow changes in the long, sustained dissonance which supports the solo viola’s angry protests. Yet most groups do change bow on the notated sforzandi (I think I can hear that here) – whereas avoiding so doing creates a quite different, lunging effect (which the composer seemed to approve of). The single, arch-like structure of No.13 is marked to be played at the same basic pulse throughout – with the central section moving at double speed: the temptation, not resisted by Quartetto Noûs, is to up the tempo a bit further here, such that it sounds like “fast” music – which thereby compromises its strangely timeless, jazzy feel (if anything, the original recording by the Beethoven Quartet sounds steadier – and softer……). I wonder how they produce the tapping noises? Not strictly “on the belly” of the instrument, perhaps understandably. There’s a wonderful cello recitative at fig 54 (14:52) – as well as I’ve heard it done: marked Poco meno mosso, these are the only eight bars in the whole work to digress from the all-pervading pulse. At the very end, the viola emerges alone as all other sounds are silenced, climbing higher and higher as if to disappear…… Sara Dambruoso plays this faultlessly – no mean feat in itself (although attempting a true pianissimo does make it that much harder to bring off……); as the two violinists join her at the top, they make the final shriek as shocking as it really has to be.

I suppose I was sorry their imaginations didn’t seem quite so active and fired up by this amazing piece as I had hoped from them: if ever there was music which goes up to and beyond normal extremes, this angst-ridden quartet is surely a prime example. For instance, fig 56 (16:11) could be seen (and heard) as the emotional core of the work – yet for an instant here it seems to be in a little bit of a hurry. Moving on to the second disc, by the end of No.14 I was even wondering whether this music from Shostakovich’s last years doesn’t suit them quite so well as the earlier pieces – yet, to my ears, something changed in No.15.

In the meantime, there is the unexpectedly radiant Fourteenth quartet – sandwiched between two of the darkest works in our repertoire, such that it would be all too easy to underestimate it. But few people now underestimate Mahler’s Tenth, which experience leaves us in an emotional state strikingly similar to that created by this quartet – being also cast in the same key of F sharp major. Here, more than anywhere else in Shostakovich, is that very special use of the major mode which expresses at one and the same time radiance, sadness, joy, pain, in the way that perhaps Schubert of all composers knew best, and put into practice most eloquently in the Adagio of his C major Quintet. Or again, Janáček, during the finale of Intimate Letters: that perceptive writer Joan Chissell found the fourteenth quartet “as joyful as anything in Janáček’s Indian Summer”. Dedicated to the cellist of the Beethoven Quartet (as was No.13 similarly inscribed to their original viola player), Riccardo Baldizzi here finds himself confronted by an even more prominent part than in Mozart’s “Prussian” quartets, being required to introduce much of the main material – a challenge which he faces triumphantly! For example, the passage from just before fig 12 to fig 14 (2:04 to 2:33) is delivered with great imagination and panache; and, from fig 17 (3:12), with the implied shadowy hue. Indeed, everyone buys into this area of the work with commendable thought and integrity – although at other moments they weren’t quite as expressive as they might have been: for example, the viola solo which links into the afore-mentioned fig 17: maybe Sara Dambruoso simply chose a cooler approach, which is perfectly valid. Nevertheless, there are places in this movement which ought to sound almost psychedelic, not least the place towards the end where the music comes to a standstill, ahead of a big viola solo – which is delivered magnificently! Such that I would have expected her to sound more impassioned at fig 40 (8.52), a key moment as she foreshadows the climactic cello/violin duets later in the work.  

Ekaterina Valiulina plays beautifully at the beginning of the Adagio; and as the others join in from fig 44 (0:43) they find just the right stillness and introspective depth of sound. Conversely, the pizzicato accompaniment to the serene cello melody at fig 52 (4:56) sounds uncharacteristically pedestrian, and not as involved with their colleague as his delicate playing might have inspired. I didn’t quite understand why, from seven bars after fig 57 (7:54), they allowed the occasional bar to move on a touch – the cellist even entering a beat early in the bar before fig 58 (8:15): all of which affects the calmness of the musical context – but only marginally, since their sounds here are quite otherworldly. From this point to the movement’s conclusion the music plumbs greater and greater depths, until it finally reaches a passage which transfixed us all the very first time we tried through No.14: at fig 59 (9.18) the first violin drifts through chromatic lines as if mesmerised by a dream; all around is the stillness of unearthly harmonies, stirring only occasionally in response to the hushed tenderness above, yet never rising higher than a whisper for fear of disturbing the private vision. I’m not persuaded that the Noûs players felt quite so much in awe as some others have done. Regrettably, the odd wrong note has crept in here and there – blame most likely rests with whichever edition they use, since too many inaccuracies have found their way into printed parts over the years (a precedent perhaps set by our original Soviet hand-copied ones!).

The finale presents considerable technical challenges, both individually and collectively, but Quartetto Noûs are equal to them: to the extent that one or two moments almost sound too easy! For instance, they positively sail through the extraordinary Klangfarbenmelodie section from fig 69 (1:20): a truly scary passage in performance, every bar a potential pitfall – to the extent that it’s even more dangerously effective when it sounds like the players are hurling the very notes at each other, as if in a pitched battle! After this massive crisis has subsided there emerges a touching tribute to Sergei Shirinsky the cellist, a quotation of a quotation: the poignant solo at the climax of the fourth movement of Quartet No.8, itself an elliptical reference to Katerina’s aria to her lover – also a Sergei – in Act III of Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District. It’s a special moment, surely enough so not to require the Noûs’s abrupt change of tempo? Fortunately, Ms Valiulina thereafter delivers her high rocking solo most exquisitely; and Ms Dambruoso’s tenor version equally so, her eventual explosion of passion arising from the same material. The closing pages are well handled, even if the sheer drama could have benefitted from a touch more space at times, the silences made more potent: the habit of shortening both these and note lengths persists to the very end – but they are not the first group to finish the final chord almost a bar too soon!

As suggested earlier, I couldn’t help feeling something significant happened between Nos 14 and 15 – although we don’t know in what order they were recorded nor, indeed, in which they were first studied. Not everyone will be aware that, back in the USSR of the 1970s, popular opinion believed that with this quartet Shostakovich was composing his own Requiem, as surely as Mozart was composing his in 1791. Both works have since acquired an aura which has not always been to their benefit – and, in the case of the quartet, has sometimes given rise to some kind of need to attach all manner of gimmickry in performance. Even if we read that Quartetto Noûs has felt driven to “experiment with innovative concert formats like performing by heart in complete darkness”, we are not told whether this can refer to No.15. Given what we hear in this recording, there should be no need, since they offer the work for what it is, with honesty and devotion. They do not fall for the temptation of making the opening fugato sound as if it were from an earlier era, i.e. without vibrato: rather they give us a noble, contemplative, deeply Russian tone, as befits the music’s unearthly beauty. Their chosen tempo is exactly as in two of the earliest recordings of the work – reflecting a reasoning that, for Adagio, Shostakovich’s crotchet = 80 invariably means 69! Their impressive discipline ensures they maintain this, for the most part, right through the Elegy – with hypnotic effect. They also at times find a genuine pianissimo, together with the patience to fill silences and hold long notes for their full duration. I found this to be one of the most deeply sincere performances, most faithfully accurate, and truest to the content and implications in the score, that I have heard of this great Elegy: an enormous challenge for performers and listeners alike.

The extraordinary opening section of the second movement Serenade is actually quite difficult to bring off accurately – especially if one understands that the impact of this “non-music” would be compromised by a nourishing vibrato; and it’s to the group’s great credit that they are not afraid of sounding rough with so disconcerting a succession of violent explosions.  Unfortunately, when they reach the serenade proper – a kind of macabre slow waltz with a limp – they decide to move the tempo forward, rather than trusting the composer’s concept (also looking back to No.13) of a single tempo throughout (although, in this instance, later modified somewhat for the fifth movement Funeral March). I wonder if anyone else will pick up a strange echo at fig 38 (4:40) – as if there’s a sudden added resonance in the room? Near the end, the composer asks the violist to play the offbeat quavers espressivo, tenuto – i.e. sustained, which Ms Dambruoso doesn’t quite observe. In fact, there are other instances along the way where one or other player chooses to separate very slightly some notes which probably should not be so: a true singing legato, with a minimum of articulation and absence of portato, can sometimes seem an elusive virtue! (but certainly not beyond Quartetto Noûs, as proclaimed elsewhere in these performances).

In Ekaterina Valiulina’s hands the ensuing Intermezzo explodes onto the scene in a violent torrent of notes – as it properly should, if not always with quite such impressively controlled vehemence as here (although I’m not entirely sure of her reasoning for hanging on to the final note of each cascade). She’s also a bit prompt with her sweet farewell, which gently guides us into the next movement – where the listener’s nerves will now be soothed by a bitter-sweet Nocturne, its plaintive melody weaving its way sadly through gently undulating shadows. Here, the issue of the single-minded adherence to an all-pervading tempo comes up again: it is true that the frantic activity of the Intermezzo – and the opening of the Epilogue yet to come – hardly sound like slow music; and this Nocturne does indeed flow along more like an Andante. But clearly there must be some kind of poetic or psychological idea behind the concept of attaching the same tempo heading (and metronome mark) to five of the six movements; and so it might be best that we performers lend belief to the composer’s concept: the movement can indeed flow perfectly well of its own accord, without the need to adopt a more obviously fluid tempo (thereby compromising the “poetic” idea – if indeed there really is one). Nevertheless, they play it most beautifully, with great feeling (even if it does at times come over a mite too easy going).  

After a very long notated silence (not quite long enough here, if one continues the printed Ritenuto) the Funeral March finally arrives on stage with emphatic unity. Curiously, the main part of this movement is entirely solo, each melodic strain being punctuated tutti, like a refrain, by the march rhythm. The first strain is superbly delivered here by the cellist – once again, with an awareness that this is a real Slow March, with an imaginary drum beat – although Mr Baldizzi’s pizzicato version at fig 62 sounds a tad upbeat, when it perhaps could be more ominously scary.

The final Epilogue seems to be no longer of this world. It erupts with almost as much force as the Intermezzo, but thereafter manages only to look back on blurred memories of earlier areas of the work, amid a weird succession of rustlings, tappings, wailings, and shudderings. Indeed, it is hardly a movement in its own right at all, more a painfully poignant recollection of previous experiences: in which case, a further instance of moving the music on means that the Noûs’s “recollection” of the very opening fugato is not entirely faithful! Instrumental colour is exploited by the composer in a highly original way, imparting a truly eerie, almost supernatural, quality – once likened by a prominent Latvian writer to “the howling of the wind in the cemetery”: surely referring to an astonishing passage of collective demisemiquavers, which persists long in the memory – as negotiated so convincingly by the Noûs players; likewise a few lines earlier, when the wildness of the cello version of the movement’s opening subsides into the most generously comforting G flat major. But not for long. The semitone trill proves to be an ever-present spectre, as it is so often in these final compositions; and it would not be too far-fetched to speculate on its significance as a symbol of this stricken man’s death obsession, which continually haunted him during those last years. At the end it leads the way to the final chant, through it, and beyond it into nothingness. Shostakovich takes leave of the string quartet in a state of resignation and acceptance; and the Quartetto Noûs likewise bids farewell to a recorded cycle which, if volume 4 is anything to go by, deserves to feature high amongst the many versions now available.

A few observations on presentation. Firstly, I was taken aback that the outrageous recklessness, with which Quartet No.1 concludes, was so quickly followed by the deeply contemplative opening of No.13. Indeed, listeners might also agree that the gaps between all the works on this issue are far too short; or even question the order in which the programme is delivered: fully 32 years are bridged here in just a few seconds; and after the frightening conclusion of the Thirteenth we lurch back even more years to the composer’s arrangement of an aria from Lady Macbeth. Not everyone will feel so strongly about presenting such a programme in chronological order; but this particular juxtaposition feels bizarre to me.

Oreste Bossini’s booklet notes are knowledgeable and informative, sometimes colourful; yet seem hampered by less than faithful translation: more thorough proof reading might have resulted in an occasional bizarre phrase making more sense – and also correcting one sentence which somehow got in twice! The cover photo is attractive, and that of the Noûs themselves appropriately serious. But no image is to be found of the creator of all this life-enhancing and life-changing music! An oversight which can only be regretted.

Alan George

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Quartet No.1 in C major, Op 49 (1938)
Quartet No.13 in B flat minor, Op.138 (1972)
Two Pieces for String Quartet (Op.36a, 1931)
Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11 (1924-5) –
Quartet No.14 in F sharp major, Op 142 (1972-3)
Quartet No.15 in E flat minor, Op 144 (1974)
Quartetto Noûs (with Quartetto di Cremona (Op 11))
rec. 2024, Bartok Studio, Bernareggio, Italy
Brilliant Classics 96424/1-2 [2 CDs: 120]