PERFORMERS:
Sergei Rachmaninoff String Quartet:
Xenia Gamaris (first violin)
Alexei Petrovsky (second violin)
Sergei Tsedrik (viola)
Vladimir Shokhov (cello)
Tatiana Balikoeva (piano)
PROGRAMME:
Alexander Borodin
String Quartet No 2 in D Major
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
String Quartet No 17 in B Flat Major, K. 458 (Jagd)
Dmitry Shostakovich
Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57
For thirty years the legendary Sergei Rachmaninoff String Quartet has acted as a cultural ambassador of the town of Sochi. The ensemble was established in 1978 at the Sochi State Philharmonic. Over the years of its intense artistic activities the quartet became well known throughout Russia and the USSR as well as internationally. The musicians have performed some three thousand concert programmes at the most prestigious concert halls of Germany, Norway, Italy, Austria, Great Britain, France, Sweden and other nations.
The ensemble has appeared with leading performers of several generations, among them Valentin Berlinsky, Vladimir Krainev, Nikolai Petrov, Boris Tishchenko, Ivan Mozgovenko, Ya. Alexandrov, Dmitry Shebalin and Vladimir Ovcharek who have passed on the finest traditions of the Russian performing school to the quartet’s musicians.
In 1999 the musicians of the Sergei Rachmaninoff Quartet were awarded the title of Honoured Artists of Russia.
In 2012 the New Sochi Charitable Foundation for Culture and the Arts initiated the revival of the Sergei Rachmaninoff Quartet with new musicians.
The ensemble is home to the Sergei Rachmaninoff Quartet Creative Association, a kind of chamber philharmonic. The most important genre and priority for the creative association remains the string quartet, though varying the composition of the ensemble from duets to quintets allows the musicians to perform the entire range of world classical and contemporary chamber music, adding novelty to its concert programmes.
Alexander Borodin composed his Second Quartet in the summer of 1881 in Zhitovo – the Tula estate of Nikolai Nikolaevich Lodyzhensky (a member of Balakirev’s circle). The quartet is dedicated to the composer’s wife Yekaterina Sergeyevna Borodina and was written to commemorate twenty years since they fell in love in Heidelberg. Recollections of those days were dear to both their entire lives. The quartet is a deeply personal work, closely connected with other pieces by Borodin; in the first movement there are intonations of Konchakovna’s passionate cavatina, and the principal theme of the finale closely resembles the theme of Igor and Yaroslavna, separated for so long in the opera (like the Borodins themselves throughout their married life). The scherzo develops into a romantic waltz. The famous slow section comes with a duet of the cello (an instrument which Borodin played) and the violin.
Borodin’s masterpiece was far from immediately recognised and appreciated by fellow musicians. Rimsky-Korsakov, furiously studying the sheet music before the public premiere which came in January 1882, pronounced his own verdict: “Borodin has written his second quartet this summer – it’s sweet, but God knows what else it is.” Several years would pass before the quartet won its well-deserved acclaim.
Quartet No 17 is one of six quartets by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that are dedicated to Joseph Haydn. The impulse for their composition came from Haydn’s Russian Quartets, Op. 33 (1781), and in the cycle one can distinctly sense the influence of the composer’s elder colleague and friend. In these quartets Mozart achieved a new level of skill, though the road to perfection was not an easy one: having previously always composed with the utmost ease, on this occasion he worked on the cycle for three whole years – from 1782 to 1785.
Quartet No 17 in B Flat Major (The Hunt) was completed on 9 November 1784. This is the most Haydn-like” quartet of the total of six. It was titled because of the main theme of the first movement, reminiscent of hunting horn signals. The “hunting” theme predominates almost throughout the entire Allegro, while the new theme – in the spirit of romances of the period – appears only in the development. The first section is followed by the plastique minuet, a deeply lento section, and the light, inventive and truly “Haydnesque” finale.
Dmitry Shostakovich began work on his Piano Quintet in G Minor in the summer of 1940 and completed it on 14 September the same year, while on 23 November it was performed for the first time at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. The quintet was composed at the request of musicians of the Beethoven Quartet. The piano part was performed by the composer.
The quintet is one of Shostakovich’s most Bach-like works. It opens with a prelude and fugue, and the music of the four movements (apart from the scherzo which stands alone) is intense in Bach-like intonations and polyphonic techniques. It is, however, far from cold stylisation: of this quintet one could quote Musorgsky’s words about “the past in the present”. In his music there is a heart-rending “drawl” of melodic lines and coloristic uses of not remotely “old” meaning: the semi-spectral fugue is performed almost entirely with mutes.
Anna Bulycheva
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