Concert The State Borodin Quartet. Haydn. Beethoven. The fourth Evening World famous Mariinsky Ballet and Opera Theatre - Opera and Concert Hall
Schedule for The State Borodin Quartet. Haydn. Beethoven. The fourth Evening 2022
Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven Composer: Franz Joseph Haydn
Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra
PERFORMERS: The State Borodin Quartet
comprising: Ruben Agaronian (first violin) Sergei Lomovsky (second
violin) Igor Naidin (viola) Vladimir Balshin (cello)
PROGRAMME: Joseph Haydn String
Quartet in C Major, Op. 33 No 3 String Quartet in B Flat Major, Op. 33 No
4
Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet No 13 in B Flat Major,
Op. 130
The State Borodin Quartet is a unique phenomenon, not just
in the history of Russian music but of the entire world. This legendary ensemble
has won a reputation as a leader in international quartet music, and the
Quartet’s phenomenally extensive creativity was first commented upon by the
Guinness Book of Records as far back as 1995. The Borodin Quartet recently
marked sixty-five years since its formation. “Four equals. Each of them
different. Each of them great. A theatre of four performers,” an epithet
afforded to the quartet by Austria’s Volksstimme newspaper, could grace a review
of any concert given by the “Borodinians” no matter which musicians are under
the spotlight, be they from the distant or recent past or even the present day.
The history of this outstanding ensemble dates back to 1945 when, in the
chamber music class of Professor Mikhail Terian at the Moscow Conservatoire, a
string quartet emerged comprising Rostislav Dubinsky (first violin), Vladimir
Rabei (second violin), Yuri Nikolaevich (viola) and Mstislav Rostropovich
(cello), the latter soon to be succeeded by Valentin Berlinsky. Unlike other
student ensembles, the musicians of what was to become the Borodin Quartet felt
like an integral orchestra even while still students at the Conservatoire and
they resolved to dedicate themselves to chamber music. In 1946 the quartet, then
still a student ensemble, became affiliated with the Moscow Philharmonic (the
first concert took place on 10). Soon Vladimir Rabei and Yuri Nikolaevich were
succeeded by Nina Barshai and Rudolf Barshai. From its very first years, the
quartet stunned audiences with the sheer variety of its repertoire. Alongside
classical quartets the musicians essentially immediately began to include works
by contemporary Soviet composers in their programmes. In just five seasons they
performed roughly one hundred such pieces of music. Composers whose works the
quartet’s musicians performed included Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky,
Dmitry Kabalevsky, Mieczysław Weinberg, Boris Tchaikovsky, Herman Galynin, Yuri
Levitin, Nikolai Peiko, Vissarion Shebalin, Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke
among others. The quartet was the ensemble chosen to premiere many works, which
were also dedicated to the orchestra. The ensemble’s programmes witnessed the
birth of Soviet chamber music. In 1955, following a dazzling performance of
works by Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin, the ensemble was named in his honour –
the Borodin Quartet – and today it is famed throughout the world as a synonym
for outstanding performing skills. The ensemble’s second decade (1955–1965)
proved to be a time of impetuous creative growth for the musicians. By this time
the second violinist was now Yaroslav Alexandrov and the violist Dmitry
Shebalin, son of the composer Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin. The new ensemble
(Rostislav Dubinsky, Yaroslav Alexandrov, Dmitry Shebalin and Valentin
Berlinsky) carried on for over twenty years until the mid 1970s. Dmitry
Vissarionovich Shebalin performed with the quartet for forty-three years in
addition to being a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire where he trained
myriad renowned chamber music performers. In 1955 the Borodin Quartet
travelled abroad for the first time. Over the course of ten years the ensemble
appeared in twenty countries including Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Sweden,
Finland, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. All of the ensembles’
concerts met with great critical acclaim. At the time, the reviewer of
Australia’s Nation newspaper wrote that “The Borodin Quartet is not four
separate instruments but rather one with sixteen strings.” People began to speak
of the “Borodinians” as one of the finest ensembles in the world. In 1950
the quartet began to collaborate with Sviatoslav Richter, and this collaboration
was to last more than forty years. This outstanding musician performed
eighty-three concerts with the ensemble in addition to recording fourteen works
including quintets by Dvořák, Shostakovich, Franck, Schumann, Brahms, Reger and
Copeland. These concerts and recordings are to be counted among the finest
achievements in world art. In 1975 the quartet’s “first violinist” Rostislav
Dubinsky left the USSR, having served as the ensemble’s artistic inspiration for
thirty years since its very inception. It is with his name that the emergence of
the “Borodinians’” unique musical style is inextricably linked. His departure
was, quite naturally, a deep blow for the ensemble. It was at roughly at the
same time that violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov was compelled to make his exit from
the quartet due to ill health. At the time, many said that the Borodin
Quartet was destined to vanish. The ensemble itself, however, thought otherwise.
And following a brief interval, the revival of tours abroad by the quartet
demonstrated that it had succeeded in retaining its brilliant performing
qualities. Young musician Mikhail Kopelman, then already the leader of the
Moscow Philharmonic, was appointed the orchestra’s first violinist. Second
violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov was succeeded by Andrei Abramenkov who for many
years had played in the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under Rudolf Barshai. The new
musicians of the “Borodinians” re-recorded Borodin’s quartets and this recording
was hailed in Great Britain as “Best Recording of the Year.” Of special note
in the history of the ensemble is its collaboration with Dmitry Shostakovich
which lasted more than thirty years. The “Borodinians” performed his quartets
from the very outset of their careers to the composer’s dying days, always
remaining in close contact with him. Shostakovich’s last public appearance as a
pianist (at a festival of contemporary music commemorating Shostakovich’s work
in Gorky on 23 February 1964) saw a performance of his own Piano Quintet
together with the musicians of the Borodin Quartet. The “Borodinians” have
elevated Shostakovich’s fifteen quartets to the same august standing as such
great quartet music as the sixteen quartets by Beethoven. It is thanks to them
that Shostakovich’s quartets have been performed thousands of times across the
globe. Following Shostakovich’s death in 1975, work on the composer’s music
did not cease. “The Borodin Quartet has Shostakovich in its blood, so to speak…”
wrote Donald Rosenberg in a Cleveland newspaper. The vast cycle All of
Shostakovich’s Quartets has been performed by the musicians (beginning in 1980)
dozens of times in Moscow as well as in towns throughout Russia and
internationally, taking the ensemble to London, Madrid, Venice, Amsterdam, San
Francisco, Cologne, Frank am Main, Vienna, Lisbon, Zurich, Helsinki, Paris and
New York. In 1981 to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of
Shostakovich, the “Borodinians” ran a festival of chamber music, hitherto
unprecedented in terms of scale. The 1986 recording of all fifteen of
Shostakovich’s quartets by the “Borodinians” to mark eighty years since the
composer’s birth was awarded the Ministry of Culture of the USSR’s Golden Disc.
Not a single chamber quartet had received this award prior to the Borodin
Quartet. This recording was subsequently reissued by the world’s leading
recording companies, among them EMI and BMG. In 1987 on the initiative of the
ensemble’s oldest member Valentin Berlinsky a Dmitry Shostakovich String Quartet
Competition was organised – the first international string quartet competition
in the history of the country that has provided a vital starting point for many
music ensembles that are highly acclaimed today. The early 1990s once again
saw a gradual revival and rejuvenation of the ensemble. In 1996 Ruben Aharonian
was appointed first violinist in the quartet and Dmitry Shebalin was succeeded
by Igor Naidin as violist. In 2007 Vladimir Balshin replaced Valentin Berlinsky
and, in 2011, Andrei Abramenkov was succeeded by Sergei Lomovsky.
Highlights of the quartet’s career include over six thousand
concerts in the USSR, Russia, countries throughout Europe, Asia, America and
Australia attended by almost a million people, hundreds of recordings that have
received prestigious awards and appearances at numerous music festivals in
Russia and abroad (December Evenings of Sviatoslav Richter, Russian Winter, The
Art of the Quartet and festivals in cities including Salzburg, Edinburgh, Tours,
Versailles, Zagreb, Aldeburgh and London among others). The “Borodinians”
have been joined by such acclaimed soloists of past and present as Konstantin
Igumnov, Heinrich Neuhaus, Alexander Goldenweiser, Maria Yudina, Lev Oborin,
Yakov Zak, Emil Gilels, David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky,
Mstislav Rostropovich, Bella Davidovich, Eliso Virsaladze, Naum Shtarkman,
Nikolai Petrov, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Krainev, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Lyudmila
Berlinskaya, Viktor Tretiakov, Yuri Bashmet, Natalia Gutman, Christoph
Eschenbach, András Schiff, Truls Mørk, Michael Collins, Mario Brunello, Sabine
Meyer, Oleg Maisenberg and Alexei Lyubimov. Over the years the ensemble has
performed quartets and various pieces by dozens of composers ranging from Luigi
Boccherini and Joseph Haydn to the music of Alfred Schnittke and other late 20th
century composers. The quartet’s discs have been released by companies in
Great Britain, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and the USA.
The orchestra has recorded more than one hundred works. The quartet retains
its outstanding professional level, signature style, unique sound and the
unsurpassed art of performing ensemble music. Changes have altered neither the
intense nature of the “Borodinians’” concert appearances nor the scale of their
performances. One of the quartet’s most significant achievements was a
recording of all of Beethoven’s quartets on Great Britain’s Chandos label
(2005), released to commemorate the ensemble’s sixtieth anniversary. Much of
the praise for the succession and maintenance of traditions within the quartet
is owed to one of its founders – Valentin Alexandrovich Berlinsky (1925–2008).
Valentin Berlinsky said that when the ensemble was founded “the idea was for the
quartet to exist for all time.” Valentin Berlinsky himself played with the
Borodin Quartet for sixty-two years. He devoted much time and energy to
teaching, education and organisational work; he was a professor at the Gnesins’
Russian Academy of Music, organiser and Chairman of the Jury of the Shostakovich
Quartet Competition, Artistic Director of the Andrei Sakharov International Art
Festival in Nizhny Novgorod and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russian
Performing Arts Foundation. The ensemble’s anniversary year in 2010 saw
performances in such prestigious international venues as the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Cité de la
musique in Paris, the Philharmonie in Cologne, Wigmore Hall in London, the
Lincoln Center in New York and major halls in Australia and New Zealand. The
Telegraph listed the ensemble’s London concert in its “Top 10 Classical Music
Events of 2010.” That year the quartet also travelled across the entire
globe for the third time in its history. The ensemble continues to collaborate
with various recording companies. For its anniversary year Great Britain’s Onyx
released a disc of works by Russian composers including Borodin, Stravinsky and
Myaskovsky, while 2011 saw the release of a series of six Russian Quartets by
Haydn that received rave reviews by The Strad and Gramophone magazines. This
year ICA Classics also released a DVD of a live broadcast of a concert in Paris
featuring quartets by Schubert and Brahms. The State Borodin Quartet is a
recipient of the Mikhail Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR (1968), the State Prize
of the USSR (1986), the Mayor of Moscow Prize (1998) and the State Prize of
Russia (2001). gei Lomovskii (second violin)
Igor Naidin (viola)
Vladimir Balshin (cello)
IN A PROGRAMME:
Joseph Haydn
String Quartet in G major, Op. 33 number 5
String Quartet in D Major, Op. 33 number 6
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet № 15 in A Minor, Op. 132
Schedule for The State Borodin Quartet. Haydn. Beethoven. The fourth Evening 2022
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