Concert Review—

The Brilliance Of St Petersburg String Quartet

Was Again Welcomed In A Sunday Afternoon Concert

By Wendy Wipprecht

Newtown Friends of Music marked the coming of autumn, and the beginning of its 31st season, with a dazzling concert by the St Petersburg String Quartet at Edmond Town Hall. This Russian ensemble, considered to be one of the world’s great chamber groups, is also a favorite with Newtown audiences. Last Sunday’s concert was their third appearance in town, and their return was eagerly anticipated. The auditorium was nearly full when I arrived, and I could sense the excitement in the air.

The members of the Quartet are Alla Aranovskaya (first violin), Alla Krolevich (second violin), Boris Vayner (viola), and Leonid Shukayev (cello). The cellist Roman Mekinoulov joined them for this concert, which included two works that call for two cellos.

The September 21 concert opened with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet No 7 in F sharp minor, Op. 108. This work has a number of distinguishing features: it is the shortest of his quartets, running only about 13 minutes; it was the first of his quartets to be written in a minor key; and its three movements are performed without a break.

The quartet was composed in 1960, in memory of the composer’s first wife, Nina Vassilyevna Varzar, who had died in 1954. The piece begins Allegretto, with an agitated three-note figure, which is then changed and played pizzicato; here the first violin sounds very much like a balalaika.

The second movement, Lento, features a flowing, melodic line that is first voiced by the second violin, and then by the first. Then the music turns rather eerie, spare, and muted —  even introspective — until the opening figure returns in the second violin and then the viola.

The last movement, Allegro, returns to the nervous quality of the first. Its wild, propulsive fugal section is full of passionate urgency, which only increases as elements of the earlier movements reappear. Toward the end of the third movement, the pizzicato of the first movement returns in the form of a strange, waltz-like piece. The quartet ends with a major chord, which ordinarily would signify optimism, but here, played softly, suggests reflection.

Shostakovich’s string quartets are often seen as a private musical diary; this 13 minute piece is a perfect example of an entry in that journal. The members of the St Petersburg Quartet covered the work’s huge emotional expanse, playing with both incredible delicacy and furious abandon.

Both the second piece on the program and its composer, Anton Arensky, were unknown to me — and probably unknown to many members of the audience as well. Arensky, a Russian composer, conductor and pianist who was born in 1861, studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov at the St Petersburg Conservatory, and later taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where his pupils included Scriabin and Rachmaninov. In Moscow Arensky had planned to use his retirement to compose and concertize, but retirement only made him more dissolute. His addiction to alcohol and to gambling worsened and impaired his health, so that he died of tuberculosis in 1906, at the age of only 45.

Arensky was influenced by the leading European romantic composers, particularly Mendelssohn and Chopin, which is why his work falls comfortably on Western ears. His other major influence was Tchaikovsky. The piece performed last Sunday, the Quartet No 2 in A minor, Op. 35, was written in 1894, shortly after Tchaikovsky’s death. Intended as a memorial to his friend and mentor, the quartet is scored for violin, viola, and two cellos; the second cello, which replaces the second violin, darkens it emotional tone.

The first movement, Moderato, begins with a quotation from Russian liturgical music, immediately setting a solemn tone. The next section features a single melodic line and the mode has changed to major, but it soon reverts to minor; the liturgical theme returns and closes the section.

The second movement, Variations sur un th’eme de Tchaikovsky, develops seven variations — some brilliant, others poignant, all lovely — on a children’s song by Tchaikovsky, “When Jesus Christ was still a child” (also known simply as “Legend”). Once again, the Orthodox psalm tune returns to end this section.

The Finale begins with an Andante sostenuto sections, and then moves on to fugally develop a patriotic Russian hymn, a folk melody which has a long musical life: this theme is used by Beethoven in the second “Razumovsky” quartet, by Mussorgsky in the coronation scene of Boris Godunov, and by Rimsky-Korsakov in The Czar’s Bride.

The second half of the concert was devoted to a single work, Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D. 956, op. post 163. It was his final instrumental work and also his only string quintet; it is scored for two violins, viola, and two cellos, differing from the quintets of Mozart and Michael Haydn, which doubled the viola. Schubert was using an alternative model for the string quintet, that of the virtuoso cellist Boccherini, who wrote over a 100 quintets with two cellos — a choice which enriches the texture of the lower register and creates new options in scoring, including a cello duet or a cello melody with full bass support. Though it was composed in 1828, only two months before Schubert’s death at the ago of 31, the quintet was not performed until 1850, and not published until 1853.

This quintet, in both length and breadth, is of symphonic proportions. The Allegro ma non troppo alone is as long as many a classical symphony, or as long as the first movement off a romantic one. It opens with a theme that could be very late Mozart, and was in fact inspired by his third string quintet. This dramatic and broadly expansive section, which accounts for about one-third of the quintet’s length, continues through a mind-boggling number of sections, each in a different key and a different mood. This is why the friend who accompanied me to the concert marveled at how many parts, and parts within parts, there were in this quintet.

The Adagio has been described as one of the few pieces that attain the intense spirituality of the slow movements of Beethoven’s late quartets; one can also hear, if one can hear into the future, Mahler’s symphonic adagios. The movement is in ABA form, and its outer sections have an otherworldly yet plaintive mood that is hard to describe; “sublime” is the word most often used. The inner section is turbulent and in an unrelated key.

It is followed by a robust Scherzo whose main theme resembles the call of a hunting horn, and whose driving rhythm makes it easy for the listener to envision a fox hunt. In contrast to the ethereal restraint of the outer sections of the Adagio, the Scherzo is symphonic and large in scale, attaining such a full sound that it seems impossible to be coming from five stringed instruments. (In the same way, when I saw Horowitz perform, I had to check that he had only two hands, not the four that I was hearing.) The Scherzo’s middle section, the Trio, is a slow march — calling it a funeral march is not an exaggeration — that, again, seems to foreshadow the Mahler sound.

The last movement, Allegretto, is a rondo that could be called a set of dances, in which exuberant Hungarian dances alternate with more waltz-like forms. It ends dramatically, with two notes played emphatically and in unison.

Both chamber works and symphonies call for musicians to express a wide range of emotions and address a number of problems of technique. The Schubert quintet is so emotionally intense that it can be called a set of mood swings. The St Petersburg Quartet and Roman Mekinoulov answered all the incredible demands of the quintet, and of the Shostakovich and Arensky quartets. Their playing was completely absorbing. (For example, who could tell that the quintet lasted 45 minutes?) It was also extremely exciting — exciting to listen to rather than to watch, for the members of the St Petersburg quartet are restrained in their movements and their interactions are extremely subtle. Their hearts are not on their sleeves, but in the music.

The audience responded to their wonderful performance by being completely silent during the concert (not a cough or a whisper or a candy wrapper could be heard) and by awarding the five musicians a standing ovation — after a moment’s hesitation, during which the audience caught its collective breath. Perhaps the best description of the effect of the St Petersburg Quartet’s playing was offered by another friend of mind: “Oh,” she smiled, “the St Petersburg! You know, I don’t get chamber music at all, but when I heard them play I understood why people love chamber music.”