An exemplary project (it remains)

In this time of new editions of 50 or 100 CDs at bargain prices (making still expensive lheure ever heard music) and dintégrales curly hastily pressed by musicians move on (JaVale Schumann dune traiteSchumann: the Symphonies it will be next week Bruckner), one wonders what chance still have the long-term projects, well-designed, long matured and achieved in exemplary conditions by conscientious publishers, projects which fall back catalog of balances (this is always the anniversary of someone) or ephemeral celebrities lexploitation.

Founded in 1994, known for his cycles devoted to Mendelssohn (Naxos) Elliott CarterElliott Carter: String Quartet No. 1 - String Quartet No. 5, the Pacifica Quartet has patiently delivered in four parts (2CDs each time) the complete quartets of Shostakovich at Cedille Records (miking superb), adding to each volume a contemporary work in its composition quartets that it contains (a work written in the USSR, hence the title "the Soviet Experience").

For volume 1 (quartets 5-8): the 13th Quartet Experience MiaskovskySoviet-String Quarter

For the (present) Volume 2 (quartets 1-4), recorded in 2010-2011: the second quartet Prokofiev

For volume 3 (quartets 9-12): 6th quartet WeinbergSoviet Experience 3

For Volume 4 (quartets 13-15): The 3rd quartet DALFRED Schnittke The Soviet Experience (Volume 4)

The second quartet Shostakovich having been completed in 1944 and all the works of this volume dating of the times of the German-Soviet confrontation or immediate post-World War, so we are entitled to coverage to the illustration this propaganda image where a proud Red Army soldier gives a clean sweep and symbolizes lécrasement (real) Reich forces.

This little-known second quartet op. 68, which closely follows the second Trio deserves to get out of the shadow: each movement is exciting, especially the second, where the recitative in part the first violin plays a fundamental role (Simin Ganatra sy glory covers) and final in variations on a theme typically Slavic.

For LOEUVRE most developed among the first four quartets, the Third Quartet op. 73 in five movements, which deeply touched Shostakovich as understood by reading the leaflet, there is disposed in the recent past of the check-Hagen Quartet (performed in 2005 with a magnificent Eighth Quartet) String Quartet No. 3 A - A Quartet Rope No. 7 - A String Quartet No. 8. The version of Pacifica is less emaciated, less squeaky, more human and warm; it made me more love LOEUVRE.

For the quartet No. 2 by Prokofiev, written in the Caucasus while the composer was exfiltrated behind the front during the Second World War, and established in September 1942 in Moscow, we are reminded of the old drive Quartetto Italiano in his youth ( Testament) works for strings. But this version is excellent, especially in the mild center pane, and in the Finale exhilarating. In this second quartet, loans to popular tradition do not sound like the answer to official instructions, but rather as an act of faith in the forces of life.

The Pacifica Quartet combines many flaws: its members are alive (which harms their respectability, it is requested to admire only the dead), they Nont not worked directly with these composers will, they are American (and you know that you need to play by Russian Tchaikovsky and Debussy by Auvergne). But their Shostakovich's smart, incisive and full of fire (the finale of the fourth quartet) and it constantly keeps attention.

Here, there are still projects, designed to make the listener more educated, more aware of the respective place of work, more aware of the history of styles rather than for passive consumers of a continuous stream of music interchangeable. In these projects, these artists, these publishers want an audience, a curious audience that will not only under the heading of the fifteen Shostakovich symphonies, or the two or three most famous, and who will go to see these quartets beyond historical engravings quartet BorodineChostakovitch: Complete String Quartets.