Ludwig van Beethoven: Streichquartette Vol.1 auf CD

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The Beethoven Quartet is one of those unique chamber ensembles of the 20th century which kept its original cast of performers for almost four decades. The height of its fame was from the 1930’s and through the 1950’s, a time of an unprecedented flourish of performing arts at the Soviet Union of that time and, at the same time, during the period of a stifling conservative-preservationist cultural politics of Stalin. The “Beethovenians” were among the few lucky ones: in essence during that time their quartet achieved the status of “chamber ensemble No. 1” and was even invited regularly to perform in official government-held concerts, where their specific genre contrasted greatly with the overall pompous monumental aesthetics. From 1923 until 1965 Dmitri Tsyganov, Vassily Shirinsky, Vadim Borisovisky and Sergei Shirinsky constantly worked together, attracting into their orbit numerous outstanding musicians – K. Igumnov, E. Gilels, M. Yudina, M. Grinberg, I. Gertovich, A. Volodin, A. Nezhdanova, P. Nortsov and numerous others…

The birth of this ensemble of musicians happened rather accidentally: Vassily Shirinsky, who studied composition with Nikolai Myaskovsky (and whose career as a composer developed rather successfully, since his song with the refrain “Tra-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta, we are carrying the cat along with us” is sung by children up to the present day) asked his brother and two common friends of theirs to perform a newly composed piece for string quartet at a composition exam at Moscow Conservatory. The exam took place on 30 June 1923, and already four months later or 30 November the first concert took place of the quartet ensemble, which was given the title of “Moscow State Conservatory String Quartet”. At once numerous proposals were heaped on the newly-formed ensemble – to play new music in festivals in Leningrad and to play Tchaikovsky at the Maly Theater…. It must be mentioned that the “absolute champion” of the chamber music stage of the 1920s was the Stradivari String Quartet, consisting of virtuosi formed back in the pre-revolutionary times (at which time it was the String Quartet of the Duke of Meklenburg). The young musicians had extended the veneration of the older musicians, however the performing tendencies of that era demanded particularly that which was present in their performance: not a predominating virtuosity but a rendition of the classical repertoire and new, recently composed music with a type of interpretation that would be penetrating and simultaneously accessible to wide audiences. The Stradivari String Quartet soon fell apart, so the only remaining “competitors” of the Conservatory Quartet were the musicians of the no less remarkable Glazounov String Quartet in Leningrad. However their intimate, lyrical manner of performance did not fit in the least for becoming the leading chamber ensemble of the country. As early as in 1930 the musicians came to the Muztrest in order to record their first gramophone records – both together as an ensemble and separately as soloists. Their first recording in ensemble was that of Borodin’s Second String Quartet. Upon becoming acquainted with it (unfortunately this recording has never been re-released since then) one is struck at once how stable with the ongoing years is the power of the quartet, as inherent in the epic grandeur of their rendition, the expression and compatibility of the ensemble performance, the nobleness and culture of the presentation of the music will forever remain the visiting card of the ensemble, even after the replacements of several of its members (up until the departure of Tsyganov in 1978). The recording was done with the use of very imperfect equipment, hence it took a long time and the individual movements of the large quartet were released separately. On the red-gold labels of some of the movements of Borodin’s String Quartet there was an inscription “performed by the Moscow State Conservatory String Quartet” whereas on others there was the inscription “the Beethoven String Quartet”. Someone who was not familiar with the ensemble could have thought that these were two separate ensembles. So what has happened?

The situation turned out to be that in 1930 most of the levers of the musical life in both of the Russian capitals turned out to be in the hands of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), which tended to deny the necessity of most of the classical musical heritage for the new society and the new proletarian culture. The only two composers who have “rehabilitated” themselves in their eyes were Beethoven and Moussorgsky. For the left-wing ideologues Beethoven was perceived as a musical embodiment of the Marxist dialectics of struggle, while Mouusorgsky was perceived to be a champion of popular freedom. When Moscow Conservatory itself was renamed into the High Music School named after Comrade Felix Kohn (the old Bolshevik Kohn, a terrorist and underground activist, who presided the controlling committee of the International, was compelled to carry out the leadership over the Conservatory and then the Radio Committee), according to the testimony of the widow of violist Borisovsky, Kohn himself suggested them to choose a name out of these two. Since Moussorgsky did not write string quartets the choice, naturally, fell on Beethoven. Despite the fact that the left-wing activists were soon purged from the leadership of the art committees, the String Quartet continued its existence under the name of Beethoven up until the fall of the government of the Communist Party (VKP(b) or CPSU).

All the more puzzling presents the fact that among more than 200 recordings made by the quartet from 1930 to 1964 (in their original make-up) there are not so many recordings of Beethoven’s string quartets. The focal point of the quartet’s repertoire was the Russian classics, first of all Tchaikovsky and Borodin, as well as new music, including Shostakovich. The latter entrusted to the “Beethovenians” the world premieres of all of his string quartets, starting with the Second. Shostakovich’s Quintet (with the composer performing in the ensemble) and the Third String Quartet were even recorded twice. The Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet in their flawlessly recognizable performance presented itself as a background to that stormy epoch. It was particularly this piece with which on the Easter week of 1965 the string quartet ensemble finished its work in its original cast.

However the complete recording of all of Beethoven’s String Quartets took such a long time to be completed, that the unified cycle of the composer’s String Quartets on gramophone records was recorded only after only two musicians had remained of the original cast of performers: namely, Dmitri Tsyganov and Sergei Shirinsky. After a stroke in 1964 Borisovsky ceased playing in the ensemble, bringing in his favorite student Feodor Druzhinin. Subsequently, in August 1965 Vassily Shirinsky died, and his place at the stand of the second violin was taken up by Nikolai Zabavnikov, Tsyganov’s pupil. The persistent plea of Shostakovich to have the quartet ensemble preserved carried out its influence in regards to the final decision of the remaining participants to continuing the performances and recordings in a new format. Among the quartet’s new projects the greatest priorities continued to be held by the world premieres of Shostakovich’s compositions and the long awaited for though, alas, belated, project of a compilation of recordings of all of Beethoven’s recordings. The recording sessions of the complete Beethoven String Quartets and the Grosse Fuge were carried out between October 1969 and February 1972 in the studio of the “Melodiya” record firm on Stankevich Street, by the sound engineer V. Skoblo and chief editor K. Kalinenko. They form an integrated cycle, generalizing the quartet’s approach to the music of the classics. Not adhering to a strict or “objective” manner, demanded of performances of the classics in the post-war era, the Beethoven String Quartet performs Beethoven in the same manner that brought fame and glory to the ensemble in the 1930s: the heartfelt, psychological lyrical manner of performance, well thought out to the utmost details, goes hand in hand with a massive, heroic, pathetic manner. The compassion comes to mind made once by Rostislav Dubinsky, the violinist of the celebrated quartet of the following generation, the Borodin String Quartet, who compared the performances of the “Beethovenians” to the manner of performance of the actors of the Maly Theater. Of course, at the beginning of the 1970s this “oasis” of the old performing school seemed to be somewhat archaic and even naïve in its approach to Beethoven in comparison to the new interpretations of the classics and the cardinal changes, which have spread in the art of string quartet performance after World War II. Hence, this cycle, which cost so much effort to the musicians of the Beethoven String Quartet, was hardly noticed by the general public (which is not the case of their recordings of Shostakovich’s last string quartets) and was never released on compact-discs.

The cast of the original Beethoven String Quartet changed completely in 1978 when Tsyganov left the quartet (Sergei Shirinsky died prior to that in 1974, and was replaced by Evgeny Altman). Directed by Ukrainian violinist Oleg Krysa, who replaced Tsyganov, the quartet continued its existence for another decade and an a half and quietly passed away… And only now, when interest towards the performing traditions of Russia is not subsiding, but rather reviving once again, we can evaluate according to its true merit that grandiose sounding heritage of the Beethoven String Quartet, ranging in time from the era of the first steps of electro-mechanical recording in Russia to the era of the first steps in digital recording. The new release of the Complete Beethoven String Quartets as performed by the Beethoven String Quartet presents a worthy continuation of the endeavor, started in Shostakovich’s anniversary year of releasing anew of the Complete Shostakovich String Quartets in performance by this celebrated ensemble. (melody. su)