Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Shostakovich: Unpacked
New Zealand String Quartet with Ghost Trio
Kāhui St David’s
September 24
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
For their latest concert “Shostakovich Unpacked” the New Zealand String quartet joined with the Ghost Trio to perform three works by the composer acknowledging the fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s death.
They performed in the recently renovated Kāhui St David’s church which has become a valuable addition to the music performing spaces in Auckland.
The concert featured his “Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano” which consisted of early works which had been arranged by Lev Atovmian, a student of the composers.
The Five Pieces are relatively easy to play works which were originally written as film background music which are Romantic dance like works including a gavotte, waltz and polka.
Throughout the work violinists Monique Lapins and Peter Clark responded to the lively music engaging in their own dance moves, notably in the last piece, a gypsy style polka.
The concert opened with the composers “String Quartet No. 4” which was composed in 1949 and premiered in 1953 after the death of Stalin. Before that Soviet composers could only write proletarian music for the Russian masses. With Stalin’s death Shostakovich’s music was more accepted and his reputation restored and he could express himself more freely
The work was written for his friend Pyotr Williams the artist and scene painter and in a sense a requiem.
Violinist Peter Clark playing was animated, his sinuous playing matched by his sinuous, vigorous movements.
The sounds of his violin were at times mournful with some ecstatic moments like the voice of a Jewish cantor.
Where his voice might be seen as that of a souring angel the two other violinists Arna Morton and Gillian Ansell provided more human responses with sounds representing human grief.
In the third movement there was lively a conversation between the violists and Callum Hall’s cello with some abrupt sounds and ricochet bowing creating a tense atmosphere which morphed into more whimsical but soulful sequence.
There was some effervescent playing as the strings seems to compete with each other, the cello providing a solid base in a headlong race. There were passages filled with pizzicato playing representing Jewish folk melodies along with some strangled voice and jazz sounds.
At times the group sounded like a choir full of disparate voices with the plucking of strings and the clashing of bows against strings. Between these harsh attacks which had an intense physicality there were sections of reverie with the work ended with an almost whispered sequence of light pizzicato.
The final, work on the programme played by the Ghost Trio was the composers “Piano Trio No 2” which was written in the middle of the Great Patriotic War and is the composer’s response to the drama and destruction of the time. It opened with the high-pitched sounds of the cello played by Ken Ichinose, a sole voice in a deserted landscape followed by the mournful piano. The insistent cello and repeated phrases of the piano suggested the harsh sounds of battles followed by victory followed by defeat and retreat.
The subversive use of the ‘forbidden’ Jewish folk themes which Shostakovich often used as a subversive element can be heard, especially in the third and fourth movements.
Throughout the work there are massive sequences in which piano violin and cello seem to compete with each other but in the end merge. There were parts where the piano performed a death march and the three instruments provided a tapestry of dispiriting sounds as the instruments wove an intricate pattern of some elaborate game, the violinist and cello in a futile dance of death. One of the final themes, possibly a Jewish dance turns into a militaristic theme before ending in a whisper.
The concert also featured the New Zealand composer Robert Burch’s “An essay to the Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich for cello and piano composed in 1975 featuring the cello of Callum Hall and pianist Gabriela Glapska. The work was evocative of Shostakovich’s work with the meticulous cello of Hall interspersed with violent interruptions from the piano.
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