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Make that two different Borodin quartets!

Cheryomushki | Old Town, ME USA | 01/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These excellent recordings of Moishei Vainberg's Piano Quintet, op. 18, and String Quartet No. 12, op. 103, are actually performed by two different Borodin Quartets. The Piano Quintet, recorded in July 1963, not only features the composer at the piano but also the Borodin String Quartet headed by Rostislav Dubinsky, some eleven years before his "move" to the West, in 1974. The second violinist is Yaroslav Alexandrov, with Dmitri Shebalin at the viola and Valentin Berlinsky at the cello. This is the very ensemble which achieved international success for their work with Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, along with Shostakovich and Vainberg. It was known for "the warmth and colour of their interpretations [which] set them apart from the nervous emotionalism of the Moscow Beethoven Quartet."(Dr. Sigrid Neef) In my view, the sound quality of this 42-year old recording is excellent and I presume it was remastered from the original lp recording, LD Melodiya D-12421.

Dedicated to a fellow composer, Benjamin Basner, and composed in 1970, the twelfth String Quartet signals a new Soviet cultural environment, more open to the pioneering work of Schnittke, Denisov, Gubaidulina, and Rodion Shchedrin, particularly when the latter became Chairman of the Composers' Union in 1973 (at which point, indicates Per Skans, Vainberg's quartet was approved for publication). It is thus a potentially important clue as to what Moishei Vainberg had aspired to achieve in a less oppressive and threatening cultural environment. A different Borodin Quartet, consisting of Yevgeny Smirnov, Arnold Kobyhyansky, Vyatcheslav Trushin, and Alla Vasilieva succeed in rendering Vainsberg's serial composition not only accessible but also in communicating with conviction the composer's extremely versatile forms of musical expression.

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