Quartet No 14 in F sharp Op 142 - Shostakovich
Quartet No 13 in B flat minor Op 138 - Shostakovich
Quartet No 15 in E flat minor Op 144 Shostakovich
For the final instalment of Ireland's first complete cycle of the Shostakovich string quartets, the Borodin Quartet changed the order of the first two works.
Placing the Fourteenth first was a wise precaution. Like its immediate predecessor, it expands the boundaries of the composer's art, admitting elements of agitated, fractured instrumental interplay which may have been old hat in 1973, but were entirely new to Shostakovich's quartet-writing. Though the novelties successfully staked a claim to new ground, they are wielded as a rather crude device and fail to integrate fully. Perhaps in the multiplicity of motivational explanations to be found for Shostakovich's music, there may be one which posits this as having been part of the intention.
For me, the single-movement Thirteenth of 1970 holds its extremes in far more persuasive - and potent - balance. Both quartets are part of a series written for the original members of the Beethoven Quartet, who premiere most of Shostakovich's quartets.
The Thirteenth, dedicated to viola-player Vadim Borisov sky, has a consistency surpassed in the late quartets only by the Fifteenth and last, a daunting, dark journey of six slow movements. It's hard to imagine that Shostakovich could have trumped this heart-stopping valedictory gesture had he lived to complete the series of 24 quartets that had been a long-held ambition.
As in some of the earlier concerts, the Borodins' playing seemed to take a little while to settle in. But, equally as before, nothing seemed to disturb the extraordinary visionary quality of their music-making.
Their playing was self-effacing but uncommonly rich, cultured in the extreme but ready to embrace brutality, tightly reined but also curiously untrammelled. In short, it was as packed with paradoxes and conundrums as the music itself.
If Shostakovich were around to hear them, I'm sure he would have smiled and wept, and those of us lucky to have been in Bantry to travel the full journey with them, will probably never feel quite the same about either Shostakovich or string quartet-playing again.
