Shostakovich: String Quartet No.2 in A major, Op.68 (1944)
Overture – Moderato con moto
Recitative and Romance – Adagio
Valse – Allegro
Theme with variations Adagio – Moderato con moto –
Allegretto – Allegro non troppo – Allegro – Adagio
Although it was the Glazunov Quartet who gave the first performance of Quartet No.1 (in Leningrad, on 10 October 1938) it was the Beethoven Quartet who were entrusted with the Moscow première, six days later. Thus began a quite remarkable creative relationship which continued for the rest of the composer’s life. One wonders whether Shostakovich would have turned to the medium with such frequency and assurance had not this very special ensemble been constantly available to him as an inspiration and a faithful mouthpiece. Following the death of Vassily Shirinsky (the second violinist) in 1966, he said to the quartet’s leader, Dmitri Tsyganov, “We all take leave of life sooner or later, but the Beethoven Quartet must go on for fifty years, for a hundred years. It is your duty to ensure that the Quartet remains at the high level it should maintain, even when its senior members gradually depart.” This advice was heeded, for although two further members died during Shostakovich’s lifetime, all three were replaced in turn by younger players. Eventually Tsyganov himself decided to retire, but the group nevertheless continued for several more years, albeit with none of its original members.
The first fruits of this association between the composer and the Beethoven Quartet actually turned out to be the Piano Quintet (Op.57, 1940) and Piano Trio (Op.67, 1944). Yet fully six years had elapsed before Shostakovich tried his hand at another string quartet, during which time Europe had been torn apart by war. Surprisingly, this second quartet – dedicated to his friend, the composer Vissarion Shebalin – reflects little of such events, possibly because he felt that he had still not achieved sufficient command or flexibility in the medium through which to articulate his deepest thoughts. Of course he was much more comfortably at home with a full orchestra at his disposal: it was in two enormous symphonies, No.7 (the Leningrad) and No.8, that he left his true testament to those wartime years – as well as in the Trio, where the availability of his own instrument gave him the necessary confidence. Twenty days after the completion of that harrowing score he began work on his new quartet; eighteen days later he must surely have exorcised from his system any doubts over his competence as a quartet writer! Certainly the experience gained enabled him to relive the memories of those times with renewed intensity through the quartet medium, as Nos. 3 and 8 powerfully demonstrate. However, No.2 stands as a strong, exciting, and demanding work, made of the toughest fibre, exploring an almost bewildering range of ideas and moods. After those huge symphonies one might be surprised at the level of discipline he managed to impose on himself in this quartet, despite its frequently massive sonorities and its great length – nearly three times longer than No.1, and exceeded only by No.15 (depending on the staying power of the players over its six Adagios!). But there is no denying the tremendous impact made by the opening gestures, which Shostakovich manages to sustain with unrelenting energy right through the exposition (all of which is played forte or louder!) and its repeat as well. Certainly this is one of the very few quartets (the sole example out of the first four) where Shostakovich writes a first movement which carries the relative weight (in relation to its successors) customary with the Classical composers.
If this Overture puts to the test the peak volume-output of a string quartet, the next movement sees another kind of experiment, and an altogether more hazardous one at that: this is the first extended example in the quartets of instrumental recitative. The device became an increasingly vital outlet for Shostakovich’s natural dramatic instinct, the wings of which had been so destructively clipped by official criticism of Lady Macbeth of the Mtzensk District that never again did he show the confidence or desire to complete a full length opera. Such music feeds as much on the electricity and projection of the concert situation as it does on the written notes, and the violinist is challenged to make an active contribution to the creative process, as well as being afforded his/her own opportunity for self expression. This way of thinking the music through the instruments and their exponents is one of the major fundamental qualities of his quartet style – undoubtedly a direct result of that unique reciprocal involvement with the Beethoven Quartet.
The third and fourth movements are more deliberately Russian in character than perhaps one normally expects of Shostakovich. The Valse is of a fast, restless type, dark and brooding in tone, bringing to mind the second of Rachmaninov’s recent Symphonic Dances (1940). Additionally, a sense of strain and struggle is imposed by the use of mutes throughout – even in the biggest climaxes, where a natural effort on the part of the players to force more out of their “dampened” instruments produces exactly the right quality. The ambitious finale begins with a declamatory introduction to a theme remarkably similar to that which opens Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov – of which Shostakovich had prepared a performing edition five years earlier (Mussorgsky had been imitating the protyazhnaya – “drawn-out” – type of Russian folk song, most of whose characteristics Shostakovich here ignored!). The ensuing variations are incredibly resourceful – and very exciting too, since there is throughout a progressive quickening of tempo from one variation to the next, culminating in an impassioned return of the slow introduction before the final grand statement in A minor of Shostakovich’s quasi-Russian melody.
© Alan George
