INDELIBLE VISIONS
OF A TROUBLED WORLD

BILL NEWMAN discusses the Emersons' new recording
of the complete Shostakovich works for string quartet

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Dedicated to members of the Beethoven Quartet, String Quartet No.3 (1946) in form and content is more compact with its opening tune (here Philip Setzer, first violin) eminently hummable on any street level [listen, CD 1 track 9, 0:00 - 0:50]. Change and shorten its notation for the poco più mosso, and it becomes terse and urgent, a tense second movement (E minor) with phrase-lead dotted crotchets, eighths, sixteenths, glissandi producing a shadowy macabre setting (again, shades of Mahler). Not content with a restless die-away, Shostakovich moves to a strident B major for the third - allegro non troppo (ending on G) - and E major for his adagio fourth movement, the long legato violin line leading to a pleading phrase higher up. Contrary to expectations, the moderato finale is not all sweetness and light, the tension mounting to fortissimo outbursts (figures106-109, solo passagework from Lawrence Dutton, viola, David Finckel, cello) before calming for the adagio coda. Elizabeth Wilson calls it 'the mysterious transformation into eternal light and conciliation'; Sergei Shirinsky, cellist in the Beethoven Quartet describing Shostakovich at the finish sitting 'quite still in silence like a wounded bird, tears streaming down his face..the only time I saw him so open and defenceless.'

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