Terra Memoria
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op.73 (1946)
Selections from 24 Preludes, Op. 34 (1933): No.1 in C major, No.2 in A minor, No.4 in E minor, No.6 in B minor, No.7 in A major, No.12 in G sharp minor, No.22 in G minor
Kaija Saariaho (1952–2023)
Terra Memoria (2007)
Dudok Quartet
rec. 2024, Sint-Pieterskerk, Leut, CC Maasmechelen, Belgium
Reviewed from a WAV download 44.1kHz/16-bit
Rubicon RCD1218 [60]

Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria gives its title to this new album from the Dudok Quartet and is at its centre in every sense. Despite the more than 60 years which separates them, it feels like a plausible and congruent sequel to the last movement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.3, whose hushed last bars melt into the silence between the two works, before we detect the even fainter stirrings at the start of the Saariaho, where the composer directs that the first two bars should be ‘barely audible’. I found that Saariaho’s piece made me hear the ingenious arrangements of some of Shostakovich’s Op. 34 Preludes which follow in a new light too. Terra Memoria is dedicated to ‘those departed’ and with the sentiments engendered by that work fresh in my mind, it was enlightening to listen to the seven selections from Op. 34 as a multifaceted miniature commemoration of Shostakovich’s genius.

The biggest influence on Terra Memoria was certainly not Shostakovich however, but arguably Saariaho’s own Nymphéa, a work written twenty years earlier for string quartet and electronics. It’s difficult not to see the focus of that work as an obsession with texture, Saariaho being inspired as she put it by ‘the symmetric structure of a water lily, yielding as it floats on the water, transforming’ (and I highly recommend the superb performance of Nymphéby the Kronos Quartet on Ondine (1047-2) to see how brilliantly that vision is realised). In Terra Memoria much of that fascination with timbre remains, purely acoustically this time. Indeed, from sul ponticello to sul tasto to col legno tratto to the use of trills alternating between normal and harmonic sounds, it seems there is barely a sonic possibility open to the string player left unexplored. But it’s decidedly purposeful, not exhibitionist. Saariaho expanded on her dedication thus: ‘Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue to change about different aspects of their personality, certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams.’ She goes on to explain how those memories might change and that her music reflects those transformations accordingly, and says of the title, ‘earth refers to my material, and memory to the way I’m working on it.’ The effect in a performance as good as the one here from the Dudok Quartet, is appropriately, an indelible one. They capture the piece’s contrasts and its transitions magnificently. In the space of a few pages the directions to the players go from Feroce, to piu espressivo, piu calmo, to Subito delicato to con violenza, impetuoso. The Dudok’s achievement is not just being able to handle these dynamics and the accompanying technical challenges, but to make sense of them in the spirit of the composer’s intentions. To take one example, listen to how they render the music which occurs between 6:30 and 8:40 or so. There is utterly luminescent playing, impossibly quiet, suddenly contrasted with flickers of violent passion, which, when it dies, is like a candle being extinguished.

The reading of Shostakovich’s Third String Quartet with which the recital begins is equally profound and considered. The Haydnesque melody which opens the work is delightfully played and the transition to the double fugue of the development section is beautifully done and played with great clarity and feeling. The sardonic second movement Scherzo is perfectly judged, and the third, which Shostakovich briefly titled ‘Forces of war unleashed’, absolutely produces the adrenaline rush which Judith van Driel’s excellent booklet notes speak of. Shostakovich temporarily titled the central Adagio ‘In memory of the dead’, but you wouldn’t need to know this to sense the affinity in mood with the Saariaho. Van Driel’s playing of the lament at the start of the movement is spellbinding. The Finale, which seems to hint at a resolution never quite achieved before that pin-drop ending, is simultaneously gripping and unsettling.

I very much enjoyed the clever arrangements of the Shostakovich Preludes which conclude the disc (some by van Driel and some by the Dudok’s cellist, David Faber). Van Driel writes in the booklet that the Quartet often perform them in high schools and then ask students to make up an image or a film scene to match the prelude. She says that the associations are frequently imaginative, which is not difficult to envisage in performances as characterful as these. As I said at the start, coming after the Saariaho, mine were of the enigmatic Shostakovich himself, and the wit, humour and suppressed deeper feelings these little pieces contain. I should say there are more Preludes on the Dudok’s 2022 album Reflections (RCD1099), which pairs Shostakovich with Grażyna Bacewicz, another imaginative juxtaposition of the sort that the Dudok have been providing for some time. In fact, their discography of the last ten years or so is an absolute treasure trove of ingenious programming. Where would we be without them?

Dominic Hartley

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