BEST CLASSICAL CDs OF THE YEAR

BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC CDs OF THE YEAR

From the Desk of Esther Cohen-Hamilton

String Quartets

The Borodin Quartet's masterful 1970 cycle returns to the catalogue -- only to be outdone by the youngsters of the St. Petersburg Quartet.

Shostakovich stands on a particular pinnacle alongside Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven: they are the only composers to have achieved equal success in symphonies and string quartets. But the 15 quartets of Shostakovich had a harder time establishing their place in the repertory than did those of his older peers. As recently as 25 years ago, you were unlikely to encounter these astonishing works unless you were lucky enough to hear a touring Soviet string quartet. Shostakovich's quartets, which were written between 1938 and 1974, have been regarded as a kind of private diary — the personal testimony of a composer who witnessed World War II, Stalinist terror, the Krushchev thaw, the Cold War and the stagnation under Brezhnev. Western musicians, who understood little about the sufferings of the Russian intelligentsia during the Stalin era, knew even less what to make of Shostakovich's volatile music. They were intimidated by the way, in the space of a few bars, gaiety is transformed into anger, comedy into tragedy and the sublime into the ridiculous. Here were string quartets in which music as solemn and elevated as a boy choir singing a Requiem could suddenly sound like an accordion ensemble at an especially raucous wedding or bar mitzvah. Little wonder, then that the first ensembles to understand and perform this music were Russian groups, most of whose members knew the composer: the Beethoven Quartet, which gave the world premieres of 13 of the quartets in Moscow; the Taneyev Quartet, which gave the Leningrad premieres; the Borodin Quartet, which generally gave the third performances of these works in the Soviet Union and the first ones in the West. So it was understandable that the Fitzwilliam Quartet, which in the 1970s became the first Western ensemble to perform and record all 15 of the quartets, felt compelled to visit Moscow several times in order to study the music with Shostakovich before committing to public performances. Ever since the Fitzwilliam's recordings, the Shostakovich quartets have been fair game for other Western groups. In the last 10 years, the Eder, Manhattan, Sorrell, Brodsky and Emerson quartets have recorded complete cycles. The last of these was the most important, not only because of its excellence but also for the prominent profile it acquired through clever marketing. The Emerson is currently the best-known string quartet in the United States and the "house" quartet for Deutsche Grammophon, classical music's most prestigious record label. Released in 2000, the Emerson cycle was generally hailed as having set a new standard for execution and created a new paradigm in interpretation — one less narrowly Russian in tone and atmosphere and more accessible to international audiences. Three years later, that opinion no longer seems so widely held. Increasing numbers of listeners confess their attachment to the Borodin Quartet cycle on EMI, in which they find more sentiment, satiric bite and self-mockery — the qualities that make Shostakovich sound like Shostakovich. The Borodin players' identification with the composer, their insights into his music, their first-rate instrumental skills and precise ensemble have set the standard for recordings of these challenging works for two decades. But that standard has been surpassed by two other Russian ensembles, an old one that no longer exists and a young one made up of musicians in their 20s and 30s.- Steven Wigler.

Wagner: Tannhauser Overture; Parsifal, Prelude to act one & Suite from act three; Tristan, Prelude and Liebestod: Swedish Radio Choir/ Berlin Philharmonic/ Abbado. Rating:
For a conductor of such wide operatic experience, Claudio Abbado has recorded relatively little Wagner. These performances - taken from studio sessions and concerts in Berlin and Salzburg in 2000 and 2002 - show what we have been missing, and belie any thought that a great Verdi conductor (which Abbado indisputably is) cannot be a great Wagnerian too. The Tannhäuser Overture is lithe and purposeful, while the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod are sculpted with transparency and detail. In the Parsifal extracts, the focus is on spaciousness and a sense of organic growth; the third-act "suite" begins with the Good Friday music and ends with the final chorus, taking in a darkly transcendent account of the Transformation scene. -A. Climent.