Borodin Quartet 60th Anniversary

Still going strong, the Borodins remain at the forefront of the quartet circuit. One of my most abiding musical memories is of a series of three concerts at the Goldsmiths Hall where the Borodin Quartet played what was, at the time, the complete Shostakovich cycle, meaning Quartets Nos 1-11. Since then various personnel changes have included two involving the leader s chair, first from Rostislav Dubinsky to Mikhail Kopelman (both excellent players), then in 1995/96 from Kopelman to the superb Rubén Aharonian. The broad outline of the Borodin s interpretative style has altered very little over the years: the earlier group maybe marginally more stylised than it later became (in the way that Rudolf Barshai s Moscow Chamber Orchestra was stylised), Kopelman s Quartet the most red-blooded, Aharonian reclaiming a certain refinement. There can t be many collectors of a certain age who haven t at one time or another owned a Borodin Quartet version of their namesake s Second Quartet, whether from the 1960s on Decca, Chandos or BBC Legends, or the later EMI coupling of both quartets (5/88 nla). This new version of No 2 is very beautiful in its own way, rather more malleable than its predecessors (note the warmth of the inner voices in the Scherzo s Trio), with Valentin Berlinsky s cello at start of the celebrated Notturno a little thinner in tone than it had been. But then, 60 years service as the bass-line of one of the world s great ensembles is a pretty remarkable achievement and it s something of a miracle that he s still playing as well as he is. The rest of the programme confirms favourable first impressions. Tchaikovsky s Andante cantabile is played with subtle feeling and due respect for the score s part-writing. Rachmaninov s rarely heard but winningly lyrical Romance, an early piece and something of a Borodin Quartet speciality, recalls the old world of Glazunov rather than anticipating the more sophisticated elements of Rachmaninov s later style. Borodin s Serenata alla spagnola opens to lusty, guitar-like pizzicato while Webern s languorous Langsamer Satz has a beguiling warmth and amply demonstrates how, at their best, the Borodins have lost nothing in terms of opulence or sensual allure. And there s Schubert, his Quartettsatz swaying suavely with agitated contrasts and some telling but never overdone rubato. So, as one normally says on these occasions, here s to the next 60 years and thanks to Onyx for a fine, nicely recorded tribute and to David Nice and Manashir Iakubov for excellent annotations." --Gramophone 9/2005

Whenever the Borodin Quartet notches up an anniversary, so too does its cellist (and so in 2005, while the ensemble marks 60 years as what the Russians call the Quartet named Borodin , we also toast Valentin Berlinsky on his 80th birthday). This is very much as it should be: Valentin Berlinsky is both patriarch and soul of the quartet. As anchorman throughout of the group which turned to the Soviet authorities for its present name in 1955, Berlinsky has lived through many changes of personnel in the early years, guided the quartet through difficult times at home and on countless tours, and still imparts his ineffably cultured tones to its latest incarnation. Berlinsky was still in his teens, and not yet graduated from the cello class of the Moscow Conservatory, when in the autumn of 1944 he formed a quartet with three other students. The guiding force was an inspirational professor in the Conservatory s chamber department, Mikhail Terian, while the other players were first violinist Rostislav Dubinsky, who stayed until the 1970s, and - as second violin and viola respectively - Nina and Rudolf Barshai. (Nina was replaced first by Vladimir Rabei, who like the Barshais suffered to a certain extent from the anti-Semitism of the late Stalin years, then by Yaroslav Alexandrov; Rudolf, a future conductor of great integrity, by Dmitry Shebalin). At first they functioned under the title of the Moscow Philharmonic Quartet; in 1955 they took as their figurehead the composer of the most sheerly beguiling specimens in Russian musical history, Alexander Borodin. Another major Russian figure has always dominated the Borodins musical thinking. An evocative photograph from 1946 shows Dubinsky, the Barshais and a shock-haired, dreamy-eyed Berlinsky gathered round Dmitri Shostakovich - the composer whose cycle of 15 quartets was to become the cornerstone of the 20th century repertoire. The Borodins celebrated association with these works started early, though in those initial years deference was due to the senior players of the Beethoven Quartet. We were not the first to be granted the premieres of the Shostakovich quartets , says Berlinsky - as we now know, Shostakovich was bound by a sense of honour in giving that right to the more established group - but we always presented them to him before we played them in public, just to have his final blessing (the Russian phrase has almost religious overtones). He never spoke about the meaning - but we were 100 per cent sure of what we were playing. (Their first complete recording of the quartets (minus Nos 14 & 15 which were still to be written) would later evoke an ecstatic response from the composer himself: Please accept my heart-felt gratitude for your magnificent performance of my quartets and my octet, wrote Shostakovich on 14 December 1967. Your splendid gramophone recordings have acquainted me with your brilliant mastery. I derive immense joy from listening to these albums .) Although Shostakovich s quartets soon became central to the Borodins repertoire - along with the Piano Quintet, which they performed at various times with very different pianists in the composer himself and Sviatoslav Richter - they were only part of an ambitious programme in which the classical and romantic repertoire tended to be overshadowed by the contemporary. According to the journal Sovietskaya Muzyka, all new works created by our composers in the quartet genre are snatched right from under their pens by the Borodins . Even Shostakovich was beginning to wonder why the quartet didn t investigate the entire Haydn cycle before embarking on yet another premiere.