'Little Humpbacked Horse' hops its way around the Kennedy Center

Alexei Ratmansky's The Little Humpbacked Horse (At the Bottom of the Sea), Mariinsky Ballet (photo by Nastasha Razina)
Over the years the Mariinsky Ballet has brought many beautiful ballet productions for its annual visits to the Kennedy Center. Miss Ionarts has grown up watching these often marvelous performances: Diana Vishneva's Kitri and Aurora and Giselle, the Soviet transformations of Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet, reconstructions of Rite of Spring and The Firebird. In recent years, the repertory has turned a little more obscure, beginning with last year's Raymonda and, opening on Tuesday night, this year's performances of The Little Humpbacked Horse. As with other examples in Russian opera and ballet, this is one of those works few people outside of Russia have ever heard of, but that all Russians know.

The tale by Pyotr Yershov became a ballet in the 19th century, produced with a libretto by Arthur Saint-Léon and music by Cesare Pugni at the Bolshoi in 1864. Parts of the story are quite familiar, as the foolish youngest brother, Ivan, seizes the feather of a mysterious Fire Bird to help him win a bride. For a new version of the ballet in the mid-20th century, with a revised libretto by Maxim Isaev, Rodion Shchedrin composed a new score, during the performance of which he met his wife, ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. This is the version that the Mariinsky commissioned a new choreography for in 2009, directed by Alexei Ratmansky. With colorful, geometric, minimal sets and bright, abstract costumes (both designed by Maxim Isaev), Ratmansky has given the piece a modern twist, while keeping in touch with the folk dance elements, of which the original ballet was the first example in Russia.

Shchedrin opens the first scene in a flurry of activity, fanfare-like brass followed by tittering woodwinds, and much of the score remains busy, sometimes to a fault. In a note written for the 2009 premiere of the Ratmansky production, Shchedrin wrote of the music as "a very early work of mine," in which he sees "much naivety and imperfection." The comic aspects of the music seem to have put Ratmansky in a slapstick mood, and some extended sections of the score inspired too many repetitions of the same ideas in the choreography. How many times do the three brothers have to throw each other around and get knocked to the floor? A few judicious cuts, especially in the crowd scenes, could strengthen the dramatic effect, especially since the best musical moments are elsewhere: with the wild dancing of the horses, the magical swoosh accompanying the little humpbacked horse (a delightfully agile and antic Yaroslav Baibordin), the evocative trills of the flock of Fire Birds, and the pretty music for the Wet-Nurses.

Top marks go to Vladimir Shklyarov, who brought the same delicate whimsy to the role of Ivan the Fool as he did in Le Spectre de la Rose and Romeo and Juliet. It is not a grand Romantic role, as he wins the heart of the Tsarevna (a lovely Anastasia Matvienko) through a combination of clutzy charm and pulling her hair. (He accomplishes this with a charming flute solo in the original choreography by Alexander Radunsky.) Zlata Yalinich was a spirited Young Mare, paired with the high-leaping Horses of Alexander Romanchikov and Alexander Beloborodov, and an enigmatic presence as the princess at the bottom of the sea. Fine comic turns came from Dmitry Pykhachov's daft, childish Tsar and the sebaceous villainy of Yuri Smekalov's Gentlemen of the Bed Chamber. Alexei Repnikov conducted a good performance by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, with an especially busy night for the percussionists, whose sounds were perhaps overused by Shchedrin.

The Little Humpbacked Horse by the Mariinsky Ballet runs through February 5, at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

NSO's Russian Tribute to Rostropovich

Schnittke, Viola Concerto, D. A. Carpenter, Philharmonia Orchestra, C. Eschenbach (Ondine, 2009) Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5, Philadelphia Orchestra, C. Eschenbach (Ondine, 2008)

Christoph Eschenbach is taking the National Symphony Orchestra to Carnegie Hall next weekend, with a program of Russian music in tribute to the ensemble's venerated former music director, Mstislav Rostropovich. The NSO gave a run-through of the program, featuring three composers championed by Rostropovich -- Shchedrin, Schnittke, and Shostakovich -- on Friday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, in between concerts featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

Eschenbach opened with Slava, Slava, a sort of overture composed by Rodion Shchedrin for Rostropovich's 70th birthday in 1997. The piece was premiered in Paris, but this performance by the NSO, its first, was also the U.S. premiere. (We are all thankful that Eschenbach stayed away from the terrible Slava! overture by Leonard Bernstein, a piece I never want to hear again.) Shchedrin's memorable and often strange piece, subtitled "A Festive Ringing of Bells," opens with many strikes of a cluster of three bells struck simultaneously (the score calls for Russian bells, here played on great chimes). A regular rhythmic pulse, propelled by raucous double bass pizzicati and other means, gives the feel of a solemn march, fueled further by an enormous battery of percussion. It ends in a crazy cacophony of metallic wallops, on bell plates, tubular bells, crotales, and more. It was an impressive clatter of sound.

Rostropovich himself was the last to conduct Alfred Schnittke's viola concerto with the NSO, back in 1992. Eschenbach recorded the work a few years ago with David Allen Aaron Carpenter, the same soloist featured on Friday night. Schnittke removed most treble distractions by leaving the violins out of the score, with the viola solo featured at the start against a drone in the solo cello. Carpenter emphasized the ardent soaring lines and deep-throated barks of the composer's enigmatic writing for the viola, created for Yuri Bashmet, often seeming to prefer rawness of sound over absolute precision, reaching a pretty strident tone in the cadenza at the end of the second movement. Carpenter gave plenty of frenzy to the opening of the second movement, yielding to the faux-genteel waltz with muted brass and the somewhat smug addition of harpsichord (amplified, played by Joseph Gascho). The piece's many shifting colors seems well suited to Eschenbach, who reveled in drawing out episodic characters, like the bitonal chords (recalling the "Augurs" of the Rite of Spring), the squawking high woodwinds, the crazy lush serenade eventually heightened by the nutty sound of flexatone, the Shostakovich-like grotesque march. The piece is quite a head-scratcher, but one that never leaves the ear or mind bored.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, NSO’s strengths, weaknesses, identity issues on display at Spring for Music (Washington Post, May 13) ---, Christoph Eschenbach, National Symphony Orchestra mix up the program (Washington Post, May 3) Robert Battey, David Aaron Carpenter, NSO take on Schnittke Viola Concerto (Washington Post, May 6)

Rostropovich, because of his close friendship with Shostakovich, had a special insight into the composer's works, although his limits as a conductor often got in the way with the symphonies. Eschenbach has his own way with Shostakovich, which he showed in this performance of the fifth symphony, a work that is either a desperate attempt to get back into the graces of the Soviet government, after the condemnation of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, or an ironic commentary on blind obedience to authority. One can certainly play the work either way, and the latter interpretation conveniently sounded much better for the composer in the post-Stalin years. In a fine performance, Eschenbach drew out a somber but also tender beginning to the first movement, saving the biting tone until later, with limpid violin sound over lush chords, a silvery flute solo and juicy woodwinds -- at times one can almost hear Shostakovich purging his compositional idiom of its atonal, sarcastic urges. The NSO, with all sections in excellent form save some dicey moments in the horns and some harp tuning issues in the fourth movement, made a lumbering dance in the second movement, with a tempo just the right side of Allegretto, going slower and more lop-sided in the chamber-sized trio, with smile-inducing pizzicato bits and bassoon burps. The third movement was a searing elegy for strings, with an elegant serenade for flutes and harp and a plaintive oboe solo, echoes of the Tristan theme heard at times. The fourth movement was satisfying bombastic, music that could indeed be heard either as an optimistic sort of patriotism or as a critique of blind devotion to the state. Our business is rejoicing, indeed.

This program will be repeated next weekend, when the NSO performs it at Carnegie Hall in New York (May 11, 7:30 pm).

Ionarts-at-Large: BRSO in Shchedrin, Shostakovich, Beethoven

Once one finds out the under-communicated fact that Yefim Bronfman is one of the two 2012/13 Artists-in-Residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (the other one is, considerably more titillating, Christian Gerhaher), it becomes understandable that he doesn’t seem to leave town anymore at all, with appearances in June (alongside terrific Salonen), July (granted with the Berlin Philharmonic in the Munich suburb of Salzburg), and earlier this month, in a Kid’s concert of all things. Presumably he’s cheaper by the half dozen—pay for four concerts, get six—and a pleasant enough pianist to hear as many times in a season: On this occasion pleasant to hear in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No.1 (a.k.a. Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra), which he and Mariss Jansons, in his first appearance with the BRSO this season, dashed off with verve, expertise, and routine.

That Bronfman is likely the right man for the job he proved with his 1998 recording of the two concertos (with Salonen), which remains most competitive in a field that gets more crowded every year. Because the hot little concluding number of an Allegro con brio worked so well with the audience, Bronfman and his trumpet partner Hannes Läubin opted to play the Bernstein doggy-style Rondo for Lifey that they had prepared for the occasion.

DSCH, Piano Concertos, Piano Quintet, Y.Bronfman / E-P.Salonen Juilliard SQ4t / LA Phil Sony R.Shchedrin, Concertos for Orchestra 5 & 6, K.Karabits / Bournemouth SO Naxos L.v.Beethoven, Symphony No.9, M.Jansons / BRSO / K.Stoyanova, L.Braun, M.Schade, M.Volle BR Klassik

Preceding Shostakovich was a work of a friend of Shostakovich’s and Jansons’, the composer Rodion Shchedrin’s Self-Portrait – Variations for Symphony Orchestra. Self-Portrait was written in 1984, at the very height of the cold war–even if hindsight affords a perspective now that allows us to detect the first thawing of that conflict... with the CPSU General Secretaries almost literally in decay and Gorbachev about to assume power. But that can't have been the view from within the USSR, at the time, with the LA Olympics just being boycotted.

During that time Shchedrin wrote a work that is, despite the program notes’ suggestions, not of audible optimism. It is, however increasingly agitated and heart-on-sleeve, brutal at times, laced with longs stretches of great lyricism, filled with music from his ballets (all written for his wife Maya Plisetskaya, one of the great 20^th century ballerinas), and an ever recurring musical cell at its core, Shchedrin’s musical signature “E-flat-B-C-B-E-D” (= S-H-C-H-E-D). It’s an arresting work, and would have been more compelling still, if it hadn’t been for the coughcophony [sic] of the elderly disinterested, into all the delicate quiet parts of course, as per Murphy's concert-etiquette law.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony was last performed by the BRSO in December of 2008 (it seems much more recent than the date suggests), and then, too, accompanied by a work of Shchedrin’s: Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament – Symphonic Fragment for Orchestra, which the BRSO premiered that night as part of a series of new commission to go along with a Beethoven Symphony Cycle.

Much of the description of the Eroica from then was true now: “Tight and energetic without exaggeration, attacking notes early, choosing brisk (but not outright fast) tempos, Jansons achieved a full, but not romantically sated sound.” Except that on this occasion the opening was rater inauspicious: not fast but rushed, inexact (which is unusual for the BRSO), and with a host of individual mistakes from the brass section. If BR Klassik had planned to record the concert for CD release, they couldn’t have been very pleased. But matters improved considerably with the second movement, while retaining a fly-by-the-seats-of-their-pants quality that is rare with the micromanaging Jansons who is more likely to err, if he errs at all, on the pedantic, rather than spontaneous side. Punchy and brooding, with sharp dynamic contrasts, and nervously tense strings, the performance became enthralling for three movements, with a particularly highlight in form of the question & answer game that the first violins play at the end of the second movement when their elliptical musical sentences are being answered elsewhere in the orchestra. Ditto the finale, which was puffed up like angry bird gone astray.

Good thing the BRSO is a radio orchestra, meanwhile: a select few players were so sloppily dressed, with short socks, even shorter trousers, and pale hairy legs peeking out or shoddily tied, crumpled old cumberbunds with the straps showing, that their visual impression would have jarred mightily with the aural quality.

Best Recordings of 2010 (#10)

Time for a review of classical CDs that were outstanding in 2010. My lists for the previous years: 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 10 - New Release

Haydn, Brahms, Szymanowski, Shchedrin, “Lyric Scenes”, Apollon Musagète, Oehms OC 749

J.Haydn, J.Brahms, K.Szymanowski, R.Shchedrin, “Lyric Scenes”, Apollon Musagète Oehms

An unambiguous recommendation for this string quartet debut disc: Apollon Musagète has, at last, released the disc with Oehms that they were promised to have produced when they won that particular special prize (in addition to just about all other prizes) at the 2008 ARD Music Competition. The result, “Works for String Quartet” contains Haydn’s opp.71/2, Brahms’ op.51/2, Szymanowski’s First Quartet, and Rodion Shchedrin’s Lyric Scenes for String Quartet—the last having been the 2008 ARD mandatory contemporary composition.

Such ‘sampler’ discs inherently don’t interest me as much as might something that focuses instead on one, maximum two composers (Szymanowski comes to mind). But even if this discs is a filing nightmare, it proves to be a near ideal introductory CD to the quartet as we are shown, one by one, through the quartet’s wit and mettle in these four very different pieces. Even as a recent live performance I’ve heard was rather disappointing, this disc shows what the four young musicians are capable of when they set their minds to it. Only an excess of ego and poor attitude can stand in between them and some considerable success. (Review on WETA)

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Ionarts at Large: Beethoven Pinnacle with Jansons

Karol Szymanowski is undoubtedly Poland’s most important composer (if we assign Chopin to the French, for the moment) and while he doesn’t exactly suffer from neglect, his work is not heard as often in the concert hall as its quality and allure would merit – nay: demand. All the more cherished was the performance of his Third Symphony by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons on the 18th and 19th of this month. The three movement Symphony for large orchestra, wordless chorus, and tenor titled “Song of the Night” isn’t just related by name to Mahler: It is set to poetry of ‘exotic’ origin (chinoiserie in Mahler’s Song of the Earth, oriental with Szymanowski’s setting of a Rumi poem), it also sounds a bit like the inner movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony extrapolated and expanded. With a good helping of Debussyesque orchestral painting.

Amid its towering, ecstatic climaxes, Szymanowski must have put enough echt-Persian flavor to make K.S.Sorabji, the composer/pianist of Iranian descent, exclaim that Szymanowski “is no European in oriental fancy-dress – but one whose clairvoyance, sympathy, and spiritual kinship created a musical language that we instinctively recognize as the essence of Persian art.” With musical voluptuousness and an unusually full, generous sound, Jansons, the BRSO, the Bavarian Radio Choir, and Rafał Bartmiński delivered a highly engaged and engaging performance.

Szymanowski, Symphony No.3 et al., Rattle, C.o.Birmingham SO et al. EMI L.v.Beethoven, Sy.3, P.Järvi, German Chamber Phil. RCA SACD

Then came a world premiere in form of Rodion Shchedrin’s “Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament – Symphonic Fragment for Orchestra”, another BRSO commission to go along with a Beethoven Symphony, in this case the “Eroica”. Shchedrin (Schtschedrin, in his German transliteration - *1932), who is disarmingly realistic about audiences and their relation to classical modernity (“presenting a modern composition after intermission can have grave consequences…”), managed to strike just the right tone. Scored for an ‘Eroica-orchestra’ with additional trombones and a piccolo flute (“borrowed from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony”), it opens with the strings and trumpets vigorously trading a five note theme, leads to long legato lines in the violins via mechanical tutti chords that push the musical machinations onward. A tranquil yet busy, repetitive melody finds its end up in an orchestral climax. After a Generalpause flutes and a gentle horn rise from a pedal point of subdued strings that make palpable why Shchedrin’s ‘motto’ for this ever-tonal work is “Through Darkness to Light”. It’s a work much more difficult to explain than listen to. Fortunately, Shchedrin offers a way out here, too. When asked to explain his own work, notes that “one can’t really speak about music. One must hear it.” The audience listened – and for a sub-capacity crowd of subscription holders the applause was very generous, enthusiastic, and prolonged.

Beethoven, finally, and what a treat this was! Tight and energetic without exaggeration, attacking notes early, choosing brisk (but not fast) tempos (~17, 14 ½, 5:45, and less than 12 minutes for the four movements respectively, including exposition repeat), Jansons achieved a full, but not romantically sated sound: Not that hovering big-band largess or ‘varnished oak’ feel that the best of modern romantic interpreters achieve (Thielemann, Barenboim), but not the lean, almost petulant excitement (or extremes, if you wish) that Osmo Vänskä or Paavo Järvi offer in their superb recent recordings. But for such avoiding of extremes, this wasn’t a bland performance in the least. Little touches, like the pianissimo figures of the first violins just after the repeat (b.154 – 160) that were made to sound like they came from far, far away, contributed to the greater picture of one long, unbroken line spanning the symphony from beginning to end.

Add to that the excellence from the BRSO’s players – individually and as a whole – that makes them one of the best orchestras in Europe, even if they are not always the most exciting one. Henrik Wiese (flute), native Bloomingtonian Eric Terwilliger (together with Ursula Kepser and Norbert Dausacker – horns), the oboists, clarinetists, and the timpanist all earned the highest possible accolades. The horn section may not have made a single flub or played a single unlovely note all evening, playing in perfect unison and with the most beautiful imaginable tone. The third movement’s combination of Haydenesque lightness and raw power – unleashed as if the music was a force of nature – was already a dream. And the pulsating, yet stately fourth movement offered more of the same plus energetic gravity, defying the inherent contradiction of those terms. The whole evening was one of those nights that remind us why we still go to concerts and why our expectations are rightly so high when we do. The Bruckner-dud from Thanksgiving was thus more than redeemed.

Ionarts at Large: Notes from the ARD International Music Competition (Day 11)

While the violas celebrate (or cry), now that they’ve got their contest all done with, won their merits, or got their thanks-for-trying certificates, the string quartets come into even greater focus, stealing the limelight off the poor bassoons. The string quartet semi-finals were a two-concert, six-hour music marathon between 11AM until about 8PM. Mozart for everyone, as well as Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade and the ARD Competition commissioned piece by Rodion Shchedrin: Lyric Scenes for String Quartet.

There’s a potential bright side to hearing a work like Shchedrin’s six times in short succession: one of the interpreters may, and if only accidentally, hit upon worthy music in it. Not unlike Sergey Malov did with Atar Arad’s Tikvah (the Britten-Lachrymae aspect of which I had completely missed). When just the notes are played, the admirably short Shchedrin piece is a happier affair than Tikvah. Unfortunately, six different attempts at the music seemed to suggest that more than the notes simply wasn’t there. It remained a vaguely pensive, casual, and perfectly harmless work. Which, admittedly, is more than what can be said about most such commissioned pieces.

The Swiss-German Amaryllis Quartett was the first to go at it, and they extracted no sense from it, nor – like all but two quartets – did they observe the dynamic markings very carefully. Quadruple- and triple-pianissimos were less than hushed, pianissimo passages – plucked and bowed alike – were no softer than mezzopiano or mezzoforte. The work, easy to read, has its challenges for the players, but even with the artificial contrasts of fff and ppp­ it’s a bit on the monotonous side. But there was Mozart, too – the E-flat Quartet K428. A breathy opening, the first violin not always easy on the ears, and the same calm approach for the two first movements. Their transparency and separation of voices was too much and bordered on thinness – with a pianist I’d speak of a “Dresden China” approach to the music. An impression that didn’t have to be much revised after the more tempestuous (and mistake prone) last movement. A neat and nippy Italian Serenade brought their 2008 ARD competition experience to a close.

If the Amaryllis’ Wolf was “neat”, Heaves & Pomerray (b.k.a. Heath Quartet) made it a barnstorming, hootin’ piece of fun-house music that sounded more like born out of the Le Jazz period in the 1920s, not written in 1887 alongside Strauss’ dour Violin Sonata, Rheinberger’s marvelous but utterly conventional op.149 Suite for organ, violin, and cello, or Dvořák’s Second Piano Quintet. The Wild West was swinging a-heavily in this, and it was good raucous fun: on its own merits deserving of a finale berth as far as I’m concerned, although that was sadly and curiously not to be.

Admittedly, their Mozart K464 (A-major) wasn't so deserving: Neither of extraordinary delicacy nor with any other interpretative angle that defined the performance, this was less than inspired. At least the third movement wasn’t too garrulous – and those bouncing, “drumming” accompanying lines (largely with the cello, but also traded to the viola, then the second violin, before returning to the cello) simply are one of the great moments in Mozart. Out of the Shchedrin, the Brits could make little more sense than the Amaryllis, though they played it with greater precision..

Notes from the ARD Intl. Music Competition: Day 2: Viola Competition, Round 1 (2) (September 2) Day 3: Viola Competition, Round 1 (3) (September 3) Day 4: Viola Competition, Round 1 (4) (September 4) Day 5: String Quartet Competition, Round 1 (1) (September 5) Day 6: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (2) (September 6) Day 7: String QuartetCompetition, Round 1 (3) (September 7) Day 8: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (1) and Viola, Semi-Finals (September 8) Day 9: String QuartetCompetition, Round 2 (2) (September 9) Day 10: Viola, Final (September 10) Day 11: String Quartet, Semi-Finals (September 11) Day 12: Clarinet, Final (September 12) Days 13 & 14: String Quartet & Bassoon Finals (September 13 & 14)

The A­fiara Quartet squeaked into finale just so, but the first price for most fashionable appearance they’d have locked up already, if there was such a category. Their Wolf was now more modern, pre-Bergian almost, and Shchedrin still didn’t reveal a secret masterpiece. They offered a more compact, straight-faced sound here as well as in the Mozart, which paid dividends in K428. The revealing notes I scribbled down during their performance: “1^st movement: OK. 2^nd movement: faultless, unexciting. 3^rd movement: OK. Finale: not a day for Mozart, today.”

Except for the Heath’s Wolf, none of the first batch's performances were top flight, and some of it less than first class, too. Happily things improved considerably when the afternoon session of string quartets got under way at about 5PM. The Gémeaux Quartett opened with Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” Quartet K499 (now that’s Hoffmeister, I can believe in). Also very stylish, these four German/Swiss players made their Mozart an athletic, even Olympian sport. The second violin (Sylvia Zucker) could have made more out of the music she was dealt in the opening movement, rather than content herself with little more than harmonic background chirping. Playing Mozart like late Beethoven and succeeding in showing the music from its inherently enjoyable side is maybe too difficult a task for most quartets.

Better a bold intonation issue, than a timid intonation issue, I say… and that might have been the Gémeaux’ motto, too, in the (bold indeed) second movement. Dancing in front of her colleagues like the pied piper in ballerina slippers, the chipper-playing first violin Anne Schoenholtz made the others follow her happily. The tight-enough ensemble and the discipline worked reasonably well in this firm, lean, occasionally muscular, occasionally mechanical performance. A steely Mozart never to love, but one to make an impression with.

Shchedrin was better from the rest only in that the voices were more finely attuned to each other, that first violin dared to make a might sound when called for, and because they nailed the very last phrase: one half bar of 32^nd notes with a decaying sound from mp to ppp played sul ponticello. Small victories. The Italian Serenade, a work that fortunately refused to get old upon hearing so many times, sounded fresh – in both meanings of the word: I loved the inflections and slides that gave this Wolf something between a Viennese wine-induced slur and a strong air of a North-Texan, chicle chewing saloon girl eying her potential ‘visitors’. (If La Fanciulla del West sounded half as authentically western, it might actually be a fine opera.) The Gémeaux didn’t go down that road all the way (unlike the Heath), though. They still observed great detail, flirting with precision for its own sake and thereby reigning some of the ‘total-flair’ aspect back in. Not necessarily a bad decision, but not a necessary one, either.

Apollon Musagete had their great and slightly lesser moments in this contest already. Now, amid the disappointing level of Mozart playing in this semi-finale, their “Dissonance” Quartet K465 (C-major) was a relative triumph. K465 is an astounding work not only for the premonitions-of-Webern opening, but its genial nature throughout. And lo-and-behold, the four Poles were the first to present Mozart that sounded genial, too. Small mistakes didn’t matter – they were negligible in light of the music of which they were part. After four moonlit Mozartean quartet-scapes, finally some sunshine! I suspect the success was due to a quartet actually sitting down for some music-making, instead of string-quartet-competition-playing. Velvet gloves in the second movement and nearly as amiable final movements only underscored how dissatisfying all the previous Mozart – including the better-than-the-rest’s Gémeaux’ – had been.

They didn’t stop here, either: Shchedrin finally had four players who at least tried to dutifully observe the dynamic markings, and first violinist Pawel Zalejski played those 32^nd note runs as if they had been etched into metal plates. Not that that revealed sudden greatness, but at least it made the act of reading along more satisfying. Then Hugo Wolf’s Serenade became a new piece of music, again. Instead of the anachronistic Saloon & Blues-interpretation, they gave us the Vienna Coffee-house version. Vienna is, after all, an eastern European city – and Apollon Musagetes made that plenty clear. The earnestness with which second violinist Bartosz Zachlod had fun was downright adorable. The performance made old gentlemen in the audience stomp their feet and howl (! - presumably because it was Hugo Wolf) with excitement. Just like the Gémeaux, unequivocal candidates for the finale in which they will appear on September 13^th.

Last for the day was again the Verus String Quartet who opted for sandwiching their Mozart between Wolf and Shchedrin. Despite my admiration for their playing so far, I imagined the possibility of these four young Japanese musicians driving Wolf's Serenade against the wall in a buttoned-up reading. Turns out that they played it more or less as I feared, but that the result didn’t sound like anything I might have been afraid of. Sure it was a rather unsmiling, un-infectious Serenade, and it was played straight faced, as absolute music. But it was beautiful absolute music now, with a nocturnal air about it.

Shchedrin’s Lyric Scenes (all scenes, no story), had more nice touches than all but the Polish performances, too. Not as accurate as the latter, but again played as absolute music which might have been as good a plan as any, rather than searching for extra-musical meaning not present. Their excellent sound raised the question here, as well as in any of their other performances: What instruments does this youngest of the participating quartets play on?

Without wanting to take away from their due credit for playing so well, their instruments must be well above average for such a consistent, uncommonly beautiful sound. A sound they put to very fine use in their Mozart K387 “Spring”. This was polished without that driven zeal or the all-too-skimpy sound already heard, displaying an exactness without that heightened, even aggressive, pressure with which Mozart had been treated so far. There may not have been anything overtly “Mozartesque” about the Verus' reading (which also means an absence of clichés), nor did they chose the casual style of the Apollon Musagetes, but there was plenty of their civilized, mature sound and groomed playing that simply has its own, very rewarding merits. Although this isn’t at all my aesthetic credo, hearing this I had to admit: Beauty is – sometimes – an end in itself. How good to be hearing them in Beethoven and Bartók again, so soon.

Recommended recordings of the string quartets played in the semi final:

Mozart, Quartet No.18, K464 - "Drum", Quatuor Mosaïques Mozart, Quartet No.19, K465 - "Dissonance", Klenke Quartet

Mozart, Quartet No.20, K499 - "Hoffmeister", Klenke Quartett Mozart, Quartet No.16, K428, Quatuor Mosaïques

Mozart, Quartet No.14, K387 - "Spring", Quatuor Mosaïques Wolf et al., Italian Serenade, Takács Quartet (ArkivCD)