Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996)
String Quartet No. 3, Op. 14 (1944)
Improvisation and Romance (1950)
String Quartet No. 9, Op. 80 (1963)
String Quartet No. 14, Op. 122 (1978)
Arcadia Quartet
rec. 2024, Potton Hall, Dunwich, UK
Chandos CHAN20328 [81]

Yes, you read that correctly: the disc comes in at just over eighty-one minutes. So much for the once-“unbreachable” seventy-four-minute barrier!

Much of Weinberg’s music weaves stylistic elements drawn from Shostakovich and, occasionally, Prokofiev, into an expressive if sometimes edgy idiom of his own. The first three of Quartet 14’s five movements, in fact, offer three Shostakovich tropes, boom-boom-boom, one after the next. The first movement, angular and acerbic, is punctuated by short bursts of busyness; the second, opening with a plangent cello, builds into a mournful chorale. The first violin sneaks in to launch the restless, unstable third movement.  The fourth offers piquant pizzicatos in triple meter – literally a nice change of pace – while antsy repeated-note patterns generate the fifth.

The other full-length quartets follow a similar aesthetic. The immediately turbulent Third, while sharp-edged, is recognizably tonal; steady nervous pulses propel the second group. The textures become quiet and spare; at the recapitulation, the theme returns in the bass, a nice touch. The central Andante sostenuto, intense and exploratory, makes trenchant use of hairpin dynamics; the solo violin’s fade into silence makes for an especially desolate ending. The more flowing Allegretto includes a quieter passage of deliberately ambiguous scansion.

Quartet 9, too, is angular, even a bit stark, with incisive pizzicatos in its Allegretto; oddly, the sound, when bowed, is no richer. The Andante is straight-toned and mournful, while the finale posits whirling folk-tune contours around a somewhat infirm ostinato.

Quite uncharacteristic, on the other hand, is the Improvisation and Romance of 1960 which, after an extended, quasi-improvisational violin solo, settled into warm chordal textures that could not be more tonal: they’re occasionally even propelled by – gasp – secondary dominants. The Romance section, with its slow pizzicatos, sounds very Russian.

The Arcadia’s renditions of these scores are quite persuasive. Some of their soft playing in the Ninth Quartet becomes a bit granulose, and the lead violinist’s tone is “threadier” than that of his or her colleagues. But they have the measure of the music.

I’m sure that any one of these substantial quartets would keep me engaged in concert. But, with the acidic dominating the lyric, all three together might not, and I don’t know that I’m in a hurry to return to them at home. It’s your call.

Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog

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