Edge of the Storm
Telegraph Quartet
Azica ACD-71381 (azica.com/albums/edge-of-the-storm)
This CD’s three quartets date from a decade when their composers lived on the “edge of the storm” – World War Two.
Benjamin Britten composed his remarkable String Quartet No.1 in D Major, Op.25 (1941) in California, having chosen, as a pacifist, self-exile from the U.K. Filled with fresh melodies, surprising irregular rhythms and strikingly original sonorities, it features eerie, high-pitched shimmers over cello pizzicati, an energized syncopated dance, a driving scherzo abruptly punctuated by rude outbursts, an extended elegy and a skittish, exuberant and eventually triumphant finale.
In 1939, Mieczysław Weinberg fled from Poland to the U.S.S.R. There, he composed his String Quartet No.6 in E Minor, Op.35 (1946), a memorial to the millions of innocents killed, including his parents and sister who were murdered by the Nazis. Bittersweet folk-like tunes contrast with violent turmoil, a wailing klezmer melody, a grief-stricken prayer for the dead, a ghostly Yiddish dance (played using mutes), ending with a grandiloquent, Shostakovichian proclamation of survival after tragedy. Banned from performance by Soviet authorities, this monumental work wasn’t premiered until 2006!
During the Nazi occupation, Grażyna Bacewicz participated in Poland’s Underground Union of Musicians, which later commissioned her String Quartet No.4 (1951). Wistful melodies and optimistic passion emerge from initial gloom, pulsating shadows drift mysteriously and a spirited rondo based on a Polish oborek dance accelerates to a joyous conclusion.
Thanks to the virtuosic Telegraph Quartet, quartet-in-residence at the University of Michigan, for this superb CD.
