Emerson Quartet, Shostakovich. Queen Elizabeth Hall, 9/11/22

Shostakovich: String Quartet No.13 in B flat minor, Op.138; String Quartet No.14 in F sharp, Op.142; Shostakovich: String Quartet No.15 in E flat minor, Op.144. Emerson Quartet

This was the fifth and last of the Emerson’s cycle of Shostakovich string quartets in London this year – 3 quartets per concert. It was also apparently their last performance in London before they retire next year – a pity then that the hall was not full (the feel was comfortably responsive but certainly not hanging from the rafters). Whether playing these quartets chronologically is the best form of presentation I’m not sure – one could easily see an alternative in playing numbers 1, 6, 11 and so on in successive concerts. The result of doing them chronologically was listening to these three arid and sparse quartets in the one concert, which sometimes felt a bit overwhelmingly bleak in prospect. But these works are all quite different also, as you listen to them in a live session, with more intent listening than (I at least can usually give) at home – the 13^th more full of anger and terror, the 14^th more elegiac, the 15^th resigned. The 15^th is by far the most memorable of the three, I feel – the beautiful opening, the 12 shrieks on different instruments, the sudden flurry upwards of the violin, and later cello, sounding like a demented Russian Lark Ascending, are all musical moments that remain in the memory vividly. But so does the whole feel of a work that has the feeling of mortality and the dread of death deeply embedded within it.  There is no rhetorical final flourish, just a solo viola that just slowly winds down to a stop. There was – appropriate, since the quartets are dedicated to the respective players of the original quartet which premiered most of Shostakovich’s works – particularly superb performances by the viola and cello players.

I’ve not much more to say about this concert. The Emersons played very well indeed, as far as I could tell, and I just drifted with them through these pallid, melancholy, intense landscapes, totally absorbed. These are difficult but absorbing works which I feel privileged to have heard live