Concert Review —

A Brilliant Conclusion For NFoM’s  Season

By June April

Closing their 22nd season with a performance by the St Petersburg String Quartet was a most appropriate choice for the Newtown Friends of Music’s entrance into the new millennium.

The quartet is one of the technically most outstanding in its musical realm. Having won first prize at two of the most prestigious Chamber Ensemble Competitions (The Grand Prix Music Viva in Australia and the Vittorio Gui International Competition in Florence, Italy), the four Soviet musicians who comprise the St Petersburg quartet are highly regarded by their peers as well as audiences who experience their masterful dexterity and tonality.

Currently artists-in-residence at Oberlin College, the St Petersburg String Quartet was on its way back to Ohio after completing this latest tour of the United States.

Two of its founding members — violinist Alla Aranovskaya and cellist Leonid Shukaev — formed the group 15 years ago, naming it after the conservatory from which they graduated in then-Leningrad. Violinist Alexei Koptev became a member a little over a year ago.

Bringing an all-Russian program to the Newtown audience, the difficult music by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Borodin brought appreciative response from the full house on April 16.

Very classic in their physical postures, there was an over-all intensity to their playing. Dmitri Shostakovich lifted the sober expression at the end, with a wonderful and delightful encore performance of the playful Polka.

Long before that encore, however, the perfection of the unity in the members’ playing was demonstrated via Prokofiev’s Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Op. 92 and the Shostakovich Quartet No. 3, in F Major, Opus 73. Years of diligent practice and rigorous standards could not be ignored in the perfect presentations.

Smiles broke out with the beautiful Quartet in D Major, No. 2 by Alexander Borodin. Written for his wife as a present to her for their 20th wedding anniversary, segments of Borodin’s quartet are quite popular because they were used in that wonderful Broadway musical, Kismet. The Newtown audience heard “And This is My Beloved” and slices of “Baubles, Bangles and Beads.”

Hearing this music in an even richer context of musical creative exploration was yet a more elevating experience.