January will still be Shostakovich String Quartet Month

[Sergeant Rock]

Angloiserie -- Cool !!! ... Whatever it means.

I googled for a definition...and Google doesn't know what it means! (other than the title of a French novel).

Karl, please define Angloiserie so we can all understand why you love the Emersons 


Sarge

[Brahmsian]

I googled for a definition...and Google doesn't know what it means! (other than the title of a French novel).

Karl, please define Angloiserie so we can all understand why you love the Emersons 


Sarge

I think with 'Angloiserie', he was referring to the Fitzwilliam, not Emerson.

[Brahmsian]

I'm up for 'January is Shostakovich Symphonies Month'. 

[Karl Henning]

I think with 'Angloiserie', he was referring to the Fitzwilliam, not Emerson.

Yes.

Angloiserie, a coinage forged in the dark wordsmithies of my soul...  years hence, when they google that word, my immortality is assured....

On the model of chinoiserie, only relating to England not China. Of course, English is actually anglais, not anglois, but in byegone day there were both forms for French: français and françois.

At any rate, I meant a characteristic English manner, a capable charm, as opposed (for instance) to Gallic passion or Russian intensity.

[Brahmsian]

Yes.

Angloiserie, a coinage forged in the dark wordsmithies of my soul...  years hence, when they google that word, my immortality is assured....

On the model of chinoiserie, only relating to England not China. Of course, English is actually anglais, not anglois, but in byegone day there were both forms for French: français and françois.

At any rate, I meant a characteristic English manner, a capable charm, as opposed (for instance) to Gallic passion or Russian intensity.

Growing up with French as my first language, I knew what Karl meant all along. 

[Fëanor]

Yes.

Angloiserie, a coinage forged in the dark wordsmithies of my soul...  years hence, when they google that word, my immortality is assured....

On the model of chinoiserie, only relating to England not China. Of course, English is actually anglais, not anglois, but in byegone day there were both forms for French: français and françois.

At any rate, I meant a characteristic English manner, a capable charm, as opposed (for instance) to Gallic passion or Russian intensity.

I kinda sorta thought you meant something like that, and I have no issue with it as it applies to the Fitzwilliam.

[Brahmsian]

I kinda sorta thought you meant something like that, and I have no issue with it as it applies to the Fitzwilliam.

Well, I think I used to prefer the Fitzwilliam's slightly over the Eder's.  So far this month though, I'm digging both, but especially the Eder's.

Can't wait for the Borodin Bovine set to arrive! 

[kishnevi]

You deserve a better considered answer, but my quick-&-dirty answer is:  While the set does not 'threaten' the Emersons as my favorite, either, there is a sort of "domesticity" and angloiserie in their approach which I am finding a nice variant tone to the music.

Illuminating indeed.  I suppose I can say that it's the domestic angloiserie that doesn't appeal to me.  I don't want a "cuppa tea" in my DSCH.   If I am served Shostakovich Tea, let it be strong and in a samovar.  And perhaps a little shot of vodka on the side.


Totally irrlevant tangent:  what is the Russian word for "tea"?

I'm up for 'January is Shostakovich Symphonies Month'. 

+1
At the very least, it will provide me with the impetus to listen to the Barshai cycle.

You may have no interest in this information at all but there are a couple of stragglers to Borodin III which for some reason aren't on Virgin, but are on Teldec. In case you've a hankering for completeness...

And the Teldec recordings match the Virgin for quality.

Thank you.  Duly noted for the wishlist.

[Brahmsian]

At the very least, it will provide me with the impetus to listen to the Barshai cycle.

Love the Barshai cycle.  It is fantastic! 

[Karl Henning]

Totally irrlevant tangent:  what is the Russian word for "tea"?

My dear fellow, there is practically no time at which tea is irrelevant.

Чай (chai).

[Karl Henning]

To-morrow, the Seventh again, by me.

In February 1960, Shostakovich found himself, bored and lonely, back in the hospital for further treatment of his right hand. He entertained himself by rereading a period novel of the 1920s and penning long missives of sardonic political commentary to friends. He may also have used this period of enforced isolation to resume work on a string quartet, his Seventh, which was completed in March 1960. The previous summer, at the same time he announced his forthcoming Cello Concerto, he had divulged that he had also completed one and a half movements of a new quartet.  Perhaps waxing a trifle sentimental at a time when he had just extricated himself from his unsuccessful second marriage, Shostakovich dedicated his Seventh Quartet in F-sharp Minor, op. 108, to the memory of his first wife, Nina. (Had she lived, she would have turned fifty in May 1959.) By late April 1960, he was able to report that he was deriving great pleasure from rehearsals of the new quartet. The brief "life-affirming" work was unveiled to a receptive audience by the Beethoven Quartet in Leningrad on 15 May. It was, incidentally, during the rehearsals of the Seventh Quartet that Shostakovich disclosed to Dmitri Tsiganov his firm intention to compose twenty-four string quartets, one in every major and minor key.

Shostakovich: A Life, pp. 215-216

[Karl Henning]

Revisiting the mighty and ever-popular Op.110 to-day.

Listening to the Borodins just on their own, naturally I have no quarrel with them. Of course the whole set is excellent (consensus is validated there), and the music always 'carries'.

Listening to the c minor quartet in juxtaposition with the Emersons, though (and call this a fine distinction, because — pace Jens, for whose hatred of the Emersons one must simply allow — they are both world-class accounts) I am struck by how . . . searching for the right word here . . . diffident? imprecise? the Borodins' playing is in the Allegro molto.  Neither of those adjectives is quite on the mark, but it's music which asks for digging in, and the Borodins' touch is a little light, a little smooth, there.

It is one of the instances where I find the Emersons particularly come through with value added.

[Fëanor]

Revisiting the mighty and ever-popular Op.110 to-day.

Listening to the Borodins just on their own, naturally I have no quarrel with them. Of course the whole set is excellent (consensus is validated there), and the music always 'carries'.

Listening to the c minor quartet in juxtaposition with the Emersons, though (and call this a fine distinction, because — pace Jens, for whose hatred of the Emersons one must simply allow — they are both world-class accounts) I am struck by how . . . searching for the right word here . . . diffident? imprecise? the Borodins' playing is in the Allegro molto.  Neither of those adjectives is quite on the mark, but it's music which asks for digging in, and the Borodins' touch is a little light, a little smooth, there.

It is one of the instances where I find the Emersons particularly come through with value added.

You musings are too subtle for me to understand but doubtless there are many who will.

Is the Emerson set released in 2006, (here) actually the same performance as the 2000 (here)?

I was able to borrow the 2000 set. I'm favorably impressed but so far have only listened to the 7th and 15th in comparison to the Fitzwilliam. I haven't decided which I prefer.

[Karl Henning]

Is the Emerson set released in 2006, (here) actually the same performance as the 2000 (here)?

I was able to borrow the 2000 set. I'm favorably impressed but so far have only listened to the 7th and 15th in comparison to the Fitzwilliam. I haven't decided which I prefer.

[asin]B000F3T7RE[/asin]

nos. 1-5 were recorded in June & July 1999; nos. 6-10, in July 1998; nos. 11-15, in July & August 1994.

[mszczuj]

No.4 Shostakovich Quartet on CD and Borodin on LP.

The first movement is absolutely superb in performance of Shostakovich Quartet especially the culmination of the first phase (0:40 - 1:30 is for me the most tasteful fragment of Shostakovich music I ever heard). I like the last movement very much, but can't agree with opinion of http://www.quartets.de/compositions/ssq04.html that it is horror, image of death, nightmarish music. I hear in it rather testimony of memory of the passed life - as its brutality and agressive arfticulation is typical in folk music of Eastern Europe (but not in Russian folk music) - the death reveals rather in the final lament.

The 2nd movement is for me better in interpretation of Borodin Quartet, I find it good but not very special as I find either the 3rd movement.

[kishnevi]

You musings are too subtle for me to understand but doubtless there are many who will.

Is the Emerson set released in 2006, (here) actually the same performance as the 2000 (here)?

I was able to borrow the 2000 set. I'm favorably impressed but so far have only listened to the 7th and 15th in comparison to the Fitzwilliam. I haven't decided which I prefer.

The 2006 set is a reissue of the 2000 set, to mark the centennial of DSCH's birth.  At the same time, DG issued nearly uniform box sets of Haitink's symphony cycle;  of the songs and Lady Macbeth; of the piano music and non-SQ chamber music; and the concertos and the orchestrations by Barshai and others known as the"chamber symphonies.   If there is need for a clinching fact,  the 2006 set states very clearly it was recorded at the Aspen Music Festival, and I would assume the 2000 set you have says something similar.

[Brahmsian]

Regarding:  String Quartet No. 15 in E flat minor, Op. 144

By the way, what a gorgeous opening movement.  One of Dmitri's finest, IMO! 

Regarding the 2nd movement Serenade: Adagio:  Purely coincidental, I'm sure (although probably both were created nearly at the same time, or at least the same year).  There is a resemblance in original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (music at the opening credits, where photographs are flashed at macabre scenes of violence), to the rising crescendos found in the Serenade of the 15th quartet. 

[The new erato]

Regarding:  String Quartet No. 15 in E flat minor, Op. 144

By the way, what a gorgeous opening movement.  One of Dmitri's finest, IMO! 

Movements like these reveal him to be the true heir to late Beethoven I feel.

[Fëanor]

Movements like these reveal him to be the true heir to late Beethoven I feel.

My very thought.  I listened to the 15th a couple of days ago for the first time in a while, (Fitzwilliam and Emerson).

[The new erato]

My very thought.  I listened to the 15th a couple of days ago for the first time in a while, (Fitzwilliam and Emerson).

So did I, twice, along with no 14 and no 9 - Fitzwilliams.