<< Front page Arts April 30, 2004

Quartet lights up downtown
Former ensemble-in-residence is a success in concert

In Oberlin most arts events are segregated along the lines of town and College. Those events that break the rule tend to be large, well publicized and aiming for a popular audience. The St. Petersburg Quartet’s performance last Sunday night at Oberlin’s Episcopal Church proved the exception, an intimate and little-hyped gathering of Conservatory students and townspeople united by the desire to hear great chamber music.

Those who were lucky enough to know about this concert were not disappointed. Violinists Alla Aranovskaya and David Chernyavsky, violist Anton Jivaev and cellist Leonid Shukaev worked flawlessly together to produce passionate, technically superb renditions of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 22 and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 11, Op. 122. While the group was clearly led by Aranovskaya and Shukaev, the quartet’s senior members, the articulation, musicality and intonation of all the individual players was remarkably well-matched. They produced the kind of homogenous but textured quartet sound that is often a goal but seldom a reality.

The program opened with the Tchaikovsky. While he is known mainly for his orchestral music, Tchaikovsky’s chamber works offer a more intimate look into this well-loved composer, a view that allows for more complexity of expression. The second string quartet is traditionally lyrical but harmonically and rhythmically unsettled. The pairing of this work with the Shostakovich worked well to bring out the subtle similarities between these two Russian composers. The quartet played this opening work with a terrifically lush sound and great attention to melody, while also highlighting the strange innovativeness of Tchaikovsky’s writing. In their hands, the modern elements of the piece were juxtaposed with the more traditional with striking clarity.

The Shostakovich was stunning. While the piece itself can come off as merely annoying, the St. Petersburg Quartet played it with a sense of starkness that was absolutely terrifying. Written in 1966 at a time of harsh censorship of the arts after a period of relative freedom, by Soviet standards, this piece is full of the painful sarcasm that has made Shostakovich famous. This sarcasm was brilliantly evident in Sunday’s performance; the grating quality of the second violin “cuckoo” motif in the humoresque is only one example. The quartet worked well in moving between the highly contrasted musical modes of the piece, shifting effortlessly from the mechanical to the intensely lyrical, the motionlessly bleak to the blithely hopeful.

The concert closed with Brahms’ Viola Quintet No. 2, Op. 111, in which the quartet was joined by Conservatory faculty member and violist Roger Chase. This work is one of the true gems of the chamber music repertoire and one of the most commonly played in one-time collaborations like this.

The group played with a sound that was warm, vibrant and wonderfully Brahmsian. Its interpretation was, however, at times a bit weighty; phrasing sometimes seemed affected in a way that made it feel forced. Chase did an admirable job of blending with the group, although he had a tendency to treat the piece’s many great viola duets as his own personal solos. Those moments that were meant to showcase the first viola, such as the cadenza in the Adagio, were splendidly performed.

Despite minor flaws, this was a triumphantly joyous performance and a fitting end to what was perhaps one of the most satisfying chamber performances to take place in Oberlin this year.


 
 
   

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