The State
Borodin Quartet
PROGRAMME:
Franz
Schubert
String Quartet in E Flat Major, D. 87
String Quartet
in C Minor, D. 703
String Quartet in G Major, D. 887
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).