08/12/2025
Review of the Chichester Chamber Concert 04/12/2025: the Carducci String Quartet
Back in March 2023 a lucky CCC audience heard the Arcadia Quartet perform with memorable bravura and finesse just one of MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG’s magnificent 17 string quartets. Until recently these radiant masterpieces had been all but forgotten in Western Europe.
Of the fifteen string quartets written by his friendly rival DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH, almost every Western lover of classical music would at the very least have known of their existence, and anyone who cared deeply about Russian music since TCHAIKOVSKY would most probably have been fortunate enough to hear quite a few of them—either live in the concert hall or via a sound recording. Many such serious music lovers would have heard all fifteen. They have in fact dominated the world of 20th century chamber music for many decades. They are transfigurative, not just in terms of their formal complexity and inventiveness, but also in terms of the sheer sensuousness of their rich melodies and rhythmic drive.
The composer had intended to write twenty-four. Each of those he did manage to complete is written in a different key. He wanted to do for this musical form what BACH had done for the keyboard (something that he himself had already tried to emulate, in terms of the piano, with his stunning 24 Preludes and Fugues). Dr Billinge in his programme notes for Thursday’s concert rightly drew attention to the extent to which Shostakovich was consciously following in the footsteps of HAYDN, MOZART and BEETHOVEN. (BARTÓK and SCHOENBERG, by contrast, had striven in their respective much shorter and more dissonant sets of string quartets to break away from that tradition—or at least to some degree.)
The Carducci Quartet have so far recorded eight of the SHOSTAKOVICH quartets (those three fine CDs were on sale during the interval). If Thursday’s concert is anything to go by, one can only fervently hope that they intend to record the remaining seven before long. Included in their programme this time was number 10, which, since it’s not yet been heard in the recording studio, will probably feature on their next disc. Quartets numbers 10 and 8 preceded the interval. Both are fairly short. Number 10 was actually dedicated to WEINBERG. The relatively gentle opening Andante did much more in the hands of these experienced players than merely expound the themes and motifs that would form much of the materials of the following movements. Already on display was a wide range of textures and timbres. But the stark drama of the following Allegretto furioso beat out a typically Shostakovichian series of fierce tattoos. The Adagio contains a calm but heart-breaking and beautiful Passacaglia, whose theme was languorously introduced by Emma Denton on the cello. Eight variations follow. Each has its own subtly different character, which the other three string-players successively brought out in turn, until the fourth movement blossoms, skittering bar by bar, without a break, right out of the Adagio’s elongated and misleadingly tranquil end. The jaunty opening tune is subjected to various different types of strain, and while this final movement never becomes as dark as the eighth or fifteenth quartets, it’s fair to say that its opening jauntiness does gradually become a tad more agitated until a degree of stability returns with the recurrence (again on the cello) of the Passacaglia’s more restful theme. The movement ends with a slightly melancholy dying fall.
The Quartet number 8 is the best-known and best-loved of the whole sequence. Cheerful it certainly isn’t. The reason it was known as the ‘Dresden’ Quartet within Iron Curtain countries is because of the circumstances surrounding its creation, about which much is explained in the excellent programme notes. The Carducci were more than equal to the task of expressing its tragic grandeur. Within the first few bars that favourite self-referential motif (D, E-flat, C, B natural, which, in German notation spells out DSCH) sets in motion a canon. We were rapt. Had any pins dropped in the Assembly Room, we would have heard them. Then there’s a sudden eruption of frenzied energy. All four players took this Allegro molto at a dizzying pace. This and its succeeding two movements are all marked ‘attacca’, and, boy, did the Carducci take this instruction at its word. The Jewish tune used by SHOSTAKOVICH thins at one point in the third movement’s Allegretto to a kind of spectral echo of its former self; Matthew Denton played this passage with an exquisite subtlety that sent shivers up one’s spine. But the propulsive energy never slackens, despite moments of something not unlike sweetness. The next Largo plumbs the Beethovenian depths after its assertive opening chords. We’re told that SHOSTAKOVICH was in the grips of the blackest possible depression while writing this music; but there is still an almost unbearable sweetness to many of its most austere and melancholy passages.
The interval was welcome, and not just because of the free drinks generously provided by Kirker Cultural Tours.
Afterwards, we settled down to listen to the composer’s second string quartet, which is of symphonic length, and which actually has the range and depth of any one of his magnificent symphonies. Given the year of its composition, 1944, one might reasonably expect something dark and menacing. The war was not yet over, though its outcome was no longer in doubt. Instead the opening Overture (marked Moderato con moto) seems almost triumphant, and Matthew Denton led the way into what, once again, seems an almost Beethovenian mood of exultation. This is A major music. A contrasting Recitative and Romance starts with wistful lyricism tinged with sadness, again exquisitely played by the first violin (‘Recitative’ suggests the human voice, and Matthew Denton enabled us to hear clearly these words of passionate yearning); the other three string players here initially just sustain a long and plaintive chord to support him; and they follow this with a similar series of drone-like accompaniments. This then warms up as we launch into the Romance, which intensifies the first violin’s extended monologue, but which gives the other players more and more of a supporting role. The music quickens and reaches a pitch of passionate self-questioning, before the first violin returns, accompanied now with pizzicato chords. What had been a sort of drone sometimes now develops into something more chorale-like before the pianissimo conclusion.
The third movement requires the whole quartet to shoulder their way through an increasingly wild and tempestuous waltz; the second violin, viola and cello drive onwards through an angry blizzard of pizzicati and anguished chords, which eventually subsides.
The last movement contains thirteen variations on a very lovely folk-tune motif; each instrument is given an opportunity to strut its stuff; for instance Emma Denton’s cello draws out one variation, only then to accompany Eoin Schmidt-Martin’s viola with more pizzicato chords . . . An increasingly swift series of first violin triplets leads into a more assertive version of the main theme, and the music heats up towards a typically energetic climax, in which the first and second violin join in a shrill re-statement of the same theme, before the cello’s bubbling semiquavers and throbbing crotchets taper down towards the penultimate variation’s seeming diminuendo, before one last blaze of glory, in which the whole quartet participates in equal terms.
We were left quite shattered to begin with, too moved to react immediately; then the applause that broke out was deafening. A superb evening of luminous string-playing from one of the very best string quartets around: how fortunate we are in Chichester to have such world-class music-making right on our doorstep!
