Few ensembles today can make the Borodin Quartet's claim to have studied standard repertoire works with the composer himself. In fact, three members of the quartet have changed since Shostakovich worked with them around 50 years ago; only the cellist, Valentin Berlinsky, remains from the original line-up. Yet surprisingly it was Berlinsky's voice that was the freshest in this, the third instalment of their Beethoven and Shostakovich series. The Borodins have played these works hundreds of times, but occasionally during the first half of the evening it was all too apparent.
Shostakovich's deceptively simple First Quartet is more powerful than some might think - he could already conjure up slightly neurotic images of wide open spaces and infect the listener with the musical equivalent of agoraphobia. The Borodins opened the first movement, rightly, without a ripple of expression troubling the flowing lines. But the promise of later turbulence was never realised. While a certain amount of detachment suits this composer, the first violinist, Ruben Aharonian, maintained an almost impenetrable coolness throughout - sections of the allegro final movement sounded more like a technical exercise than living, breathing phrases of music. Only Berlinsky injected a little lightness into the proceedings, wryly throwing out his glissandos in the first movement, more mischievous than grotesque.
If the First Quartet can be unsettling, the Eighth is disturbing by any standards. Dominated by a four-note figure derived from the letters of Shostakovich's monogram, it's a shattering work, written in violent times and during a period of personal despair. Yet their cool detachment was still an excessive characteristic of the quartet's playing, begging the question of whether they are by now numbed to the work's effects, or feel that too much angst gets in the way of the work's impact. Either way, something was lacking.
After the interval and the first few grave chromatic notes of Beethoven's Quartet Op 130, the mood lightenedand the quartet were considerably more successful. Aharonian's bright tone was better suited to the joyous semiquavers of the first movement, and he and Berlinsky enjoyed their moments of musical dialogue.
The balletic middle movements brought a welcome lighter touch from the two inner players, while the Cavatina movement had enough expansiveness to argue a convincing case for it as the core of the work.
