SESSION REPORT

As the Carducci Quartet releases its third Shostakovich disc, Tom Stewart hears from the group’s violist and cellist about the extreme contrasts between the two featured pieces – the ninth and fifteenth string quartets

The Soviet Union in the 1970s was characterised by social, political and economic stagnation – or so the story goes.

Dmitri Shostakovich, the country’s pre-eminent composer, completed his fifteenth and final string quartet in 1974, the year before he died.

The extent to which his music was a commentary on his life and times is still a matter of debate, but the work’s six movements, all slow and all in E flat minor, constitute a study of stillness lasting around 35 minutes. However, their bare textures and static harmonies belie a sense of disquiet which pervaded the world around Shostakovich and make it difficult not to hear the quartet as a reflection on his own impending death.

‘It’s always seen as a meditation on mortality,’ explains Emma Denton, cellist of the London-based Carducci Quartet. ‘The music is so fragile in places, you can’t help but be affected by the incredible starkness.’ The group’s new disc pairs the Fifteenth Quartet with the Ninth, written ten years earlier. ‘We made the recording just after we came out of lockdown,’ she continues, explaining that her father – who introduced her to Russian music – had recently died. ‘The lines are so fragile and haunting – you feel so isolated. The tempo, q= 80, is the same through almost the entire thing, like a heartbeat. Making this recording was a very powerful experience for me.’