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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
November 15, 2003
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By Cary Koh
With the end of the calendar year just around the corner, it's difficult not to dread the thought of endless shopping lists and the ensuing battles at various holiday shopping meccas. Last Saturday at Berkeley's First Congregational Church, a rapt audience was briefly transported away from all that to the other side of the world by the St. Petersburg Quartet. The ensemble (substituting at short notice for the Zehetmair Quartet) came bearing standard repertoire in the shape of Borodin and Shostakovich, but it was the unfamiliar piece that worked the enchantment.
Before the quartet began its magic, violist Aleksey Koptev introduced the evening's first and finest offering with a short speech about the composer, Zurab Nadarejshvili (b. 1957), his artistic intentions, and the collaboration between the composer and the group. Nadarejshvili's 1983 Quartet No. 1 is a portrayal of the nation of Georgia and its people from medieval times through to Stalin's rule and World War II.
The first movement is based on ancient Georgian chants and uses echo effects to evoke the country's mountainous landscape. The performance began with stark precision as both violinists (Alla Aranovskaya and David Chernyavsky) and violist played long harmonics, senza vibrato. They were soon joined by cellist Leonid Shukaev, whose passionate and lyrical solo sang through and above his colleagues' delicate, bare sound-setting.
Once all four players had joined in, the impression they made was immediate. They played with polished artistry and, when called for, a beautiful blend of sound; every note seemed to have been interpreted with much deliberation. Most noteworthy in the first movement was a solo in which leader Aranovskaya conveyed a sense of anguish with a luscious yet tasteful sound.
Next comes a movement depicting the era of Stalin's oppressive regime. Some passages — representing the chaos of slogan-yelling mobs — involve each member of the quartet playing in a different meter. There are percussive sound effects too: the players tap (some with the bow and others with hands and fingers) on various parts of their instruments. It is busy music with a sort of industrial energy, and the quartet caught this quality while differentiating and balancing the complex textures and timbres with great skill. The third and final movement is based on a polyphonic choral lament for the dead. Again the playing was meticulously managed and the textures vivid. Second violinist Chernyavsky shone particularly, with a brilliant passage of ricochet bowing; each bounce had bite and tenacity. The audience responded to the piece and the performance with palpable gratitude that both thoroughly deserved. Unfortunately, the over-reverberant acoustics of First Congregational were not kind to the remainder of the program — Alexander Borodin's D-major Second Quartet and Dmitri Shostakovich's Ninth. In the Borodin, syncopations in the inner strings and passages where harmonies changed quickly sounded blurry. Likewise, in the Shostakovich, fast articulation (such as in the galloping theme of the third movement) was often unclear.
The St. Petersburg's technical prowess was still evident (all the high harmonics in the Shostakovich, for example, were nailed with piercing clarity) and an appreciative audience was treated to two stocking-stuffing encores: a spirited “Orientale” from Alexander Glazunov's Five Novelettes, Op. 15, and a slightly turgid Minuet and Trio from Haydn's “Lark” Quartet, Op. 64, No. 5 that never quite managed to take flight. Despite a few musical shortcomings that evening, the pleasure of having heard the Nadarejshvili stays fresh in my mind. But the contentment was bittersweet, for as I left the venue, a chilly November wind served as a cold reminder that Thanksgiving blowouts and Christmas clearances are looming in the not-too-distant future.
(Cary Koh is a violinist and a native of Berkeley. He has played with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and is a former core member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has performed in major venues throughout Europe, Australia, Asia, and the US.)
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St. Petersburg String Quartet