Concert Review—

Saving The Best For Last:

A Season Finale By St Petersburg String Quartet

By Julie Stern

In this, its 29th season, the Newtown Friends of Music concert planners wisely saved the best for last: The St. Petersburg String Quartet, winners of countless prizes and awards on four continents, performed a program of Mendelssohn, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky last weekend that was truly outstanding, and brought the audience to their feet in a spontaneous tribute.

Right from the outset on April 29, with Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet in A minor, Opus 13, the tone was so clear and vibrant that it seemed as if there were an entire orchestra on the stage. Based on a German poem called “Ist Es Wahr?” (“Is it true?”) the quartet incorporated this question as a three note phrase, permeating the entire work, both as a melody and then in repetitive motif, tying the four movements together, with different dramatic interpretations.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 4 in D Major, Opus 83, was one of the works which was condemned by the Communist Central Committee’s Decree on Music of 1948, so that it was not allowed to be published until four years after its completion. While Shostakovich, as other 20th Century composers, is less melodic than his Romantic forebears, this quartet, drawing its theme from folk melodies, and taking them through a succession of major and minor modes, builds to an impressive and emphatic finale that again seemed so rich that it was hard to believe that all that sound was coming from four stringed instruments.

The second half of the program was devoted to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Quartet No. 1, Opus 11 in D Major. This is perhaps the most popular of his chamber works because of the lyrical melodic themes, the lively “Scherzo” and the forceful exuberance of the “Allegretto” movements. Were you to close your eyes it would be easy to picture an entire ballet taking place.

This was so good to listen to and the performers  did it so well that it made this reviewer wish that we could have the St Petersburg group for all six concerts next year.