Notes from the Underground

By Michael Walsh

Shostakovich's quartets reveal his more intimate side

When Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975, his music was dismissed by many in the West as hopelessly oldfashioned. With his unabashed melodies and basically conservative harmonies, the Soviet composer was a misfit in an age that prized innovation above all, and he was often unfavorably compared with his more radical contemporaries Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Who would have predicted, then, that a cycle of Shostakovich's 15 string quartets by Britain's Fitzwilliam Quartet would turn out to be the instrumental highlight of the New York season?

The decline of the serialist school, which had rigidly dominated composition since the end of World War II, has opened the way once again for a more humanistic, accessible form of musical expression. Shostakovich's pensive, sardonic, sometimes anguished style no longer has to be considered a liability. In fact, as reflected in the Fitzwilliam's excellent, probing performances--which concluded last week in Alice Tully Hall--his directness is one of his great strengths. For the conventional view of Shostakovich as merely a bombastic reactionary is wrong: he had something to say, and he said it in a way closest to the heart.

Although the 15 symphonies are his best-known works, it is likely that a truer portrait of the composer is to be found in the quartets. After Shostakovich's daring opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was denounced in the pages of Pravda as "muddle instead of music," he apologized with the Fifth Symphony (1937), a "creative reply to just criticism." Censured by a Communist Party resolution of 1948 for "formalistic distortions and antidemocratic tendencies," Shostakovich wrote two of his next three symphonies about the Russian Revolution. But these works were for official consumption; spiritually, Shostakovich went underground to express his most personal thoughts--to the more intimate, rarefied world of chamber music. Indeed, in the Eighth Quartet (1960), he wrote an autobiography in sound, quoting from his own music: at the climax of the fourth movement, the cello wistfully recalls a melody from Lady Macbeth.

"The idea that Shostakovich was merely noisy is one of the misconceptions we're trying to destroy," says Fitzwilliam Violist Alan George, 32. The ensemble has been closely associated with Shostakovich's music since 1972, when the sick, aging composer came to York to hear the group perform his tightly organized, mournful Quartet No. 13. That meeting began a relationship that continued until the composer's death; Shostakovich sent the Fitzwilliam the scores of his 14th and 15th Quartets for their first performances outside the Soviet Union. Says First Violinist Christopher Rowland, 35: "He seemed very touched that a young quartet should be so dedicated to his music."

The group's adventurous repertory also includes quartets by Cesar Franck, Faure, Sibelius, Borodin and Nielsen. Starting in July they will regularly perform the music of Mozart and Haydn on 18th century instruments. But it is in Shostakovich that the Fitzwilliam's reputation has justly been made. Whether negotiating the complexities of the late quartets, such as the tortured, defiant Twelfth, or inhabiting the sunnier climes of the Fourth and Sixth Quartets, the Fitzwilliam's performances were marked by a clear, unforced ensemble tone, individual virtuosity and an unfailing sensitivity to the music's shifting dramatic nuances. Their strong cycle not only showcased a rising young quartet, but even more important, it provided a valuable opportunity to re-evaluate Shostakovich's place in 20th century music. --By Michael Walsh

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