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“Arresting performance from superb quartet”~ Stephen Fisher ~ read full review
“Russian joke to start the year off right”~ William Dart ~ read full review
“The hall was absolutely chocka”~ Murray Khouri talking to Eva Radich ~ read full review
“Musical masters set benchmark for quartet string playing”~ John Button ~ read full review
“Shostakovich well served by Russian quartet”~ Rosalind Appleby ~ read full review
“Finding tears behind the straight face”~ Peter McCallum ~ read full review
“Great technique and musicianship”~ Jennifer Gall ~ read full review
“Nuance, intimacy and good vibratos”~ Eamonn Kelly ~ read full review
“Hearing the Borodins live in concert connects us to the source of Russia’s musical legacy with all its attendant complexities and triumphs.”~ Euan Murdoch ~ read full review
“I know of no other quartet in which the players efface themselves as selflessly as in the Borodin”read full review
8 March 2010
At the outset one must make an important point. This was not a festival concert but one held as part of a New Zealand tour under the auspices of Chamber Music New Zealand.
Had it been held during the normal concert season would it have seen such a large audience? Possibly not but, nonetheless, those present heard some outstanding string playing. It has never mattered just who plays in the Borodin Quartet - and there has been a lot of changes in personnel over the years - one can always expect playing of the highest quality. Not only is each player a master of his instrument, but the marriage of all four players produces string-quartet playing that is a benchmark.
On this tour the Borodins are offering two programmes that, apart from a Brahms quartet, is entirely Russian music. This programme was all Russian, and a safer, more predictable, balance of works would be difficult to imagine. The Borodin Second Quartet, with its popular tunes, and the Tchaikovsky First Quartet, similarly blessed with a tune of great familiarity, made no demands on the listener, and were superbly played. Maybe there was an occasional sense of auto-pilot, but who could blame the players - they must have played both works countless times.
The Shostakovich Eighth Quartet has become very popular in recent years. It is a dramatic, deeply felt, work that was a response by the composer to a visit to a devastated Dresden in the 1960s and composed there over a period of three days.
However, it is the only Shostakovich quartet - he composed 15 - that we seem to hear these days. The performance was immensely authoritative, but I have heard others with more despair, and greater anger than this.
