Edward Bhesania visits London’s Milton Court Concert Hall on 29 January 2025 for the performance of Shostakovich and Ustvolskaya
With this the Carducci Quartet launched the first of its five-concert Shostakovich anniversary cycle, a journey for which it is joined by three younger quartets. It began with the First Quartet, which Shostakovich claimed conveyed the ideas of childhood and spring. The Carducci knew better than to take the composer at his word, suggesting an alternative truth through the spaciousness of the first two Moderato movements, the tautness of the outwardly scherzo-like third movement and the edge it brought to the dynamic finale.
Next, the Sonoro Quartet performed the Fifth Quartet. Its playing may not be as refined as its more senior counterparts, but there was boldness as well as commitment here, not least in the bleached-out colours of the first movement and the high, icy first violin line of the middle movement.
In a neat stroke of programming, students from the Guildhall School performed Ustvolskaya’s Clarinet Trio, which, as the programme notes explained, borrows an existing theme of Shostakovich’s that he later quoted in his Fifth Quartet. The players amply captured the piece’s stark severity but the pianist sometimes overdid the brutality.
By now, I for one had bleak-fatigue but the Carducci kept its grip on the Ninth Quartet, not least in a fourth-movement Adagio whose chorale-like chordal theme was steeped in insidiousness.
Edward Bhesania
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