Sunday 3 November 2019

The Pavel Haas Quartet plays Shostakovich

About 100 years ago, composers of “serious” music stopped worrying about performing musicians, and about audiences. They worried about themselves and their academic reputations. As a result, I for one have little taste for most music written after 1920 -- with some notable exceptions, including the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. Forbidden by the draconian communist rĂ©gime from writing any form of esoteric or intellectual music, Shostakovich wrote music that could get by the censors of the time. Luckily for his then, and subsequent, audiences.

I like Shostakovich's music. I like the Pavel Haas Quartet. I like the Supraphon recording engineers, so I snapped up a new recording of the Quartet playing the second (1944) seventh (1960) and eighth (1960) string quartets. Music of my lifetime, and music that speaks to me; most unusual. Shostakovich's music, like that of Sibelius, has bags of personality; one cannot say the same of the semi-contemporary cerebral music of people such as Stockhausen, Nono, Dallapicolla, Boulez, or Ferneyhough. One rejoices with Shostakovich, one weeps with him, one contemplates with him, one trembles with him, one laughs with him, one panics with him.

Shostakovich came to the string quartet medium somewhat later in his career but, once there, he took to the medium like a duck to water, with fifteen string quartets. He appears to have regarded the four voices as equals, and this is good news for the Pavel Haas that integrates its four members without overt favouritism. The playing is exemplary. The recording is truly excellent. The music is of eternal value. I am extremely happy with my purchase and am on my starting blocks for future recordings of Shostakovich by the Pavel Haas Quartet.

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