Music Reviews : Shostakovich Cycle Continues at Ambassador

The cycle of 15 Shostakovich quartets being presented at Ambassador Auditorium this month achieved its midpoint on Sunday afternoon with the audience undiminished in numbers and enthusiasm from opening night. These people are apparently in it for the long haul by choice.

And they were again rewarded by the incomparable playing of the Borodin Quartet of Moscow: fresh, dedicated, technically irreproachable.

The program combined three of the most accessible components of the canon: Quartets Nos. 1, 7 and 9.

No. 1, written in 1938, shortly after the Fifth Symphony, is serene and spontaneous-sounding, yet highly polished: a remarkably sure-footed maiden effort. The terse, tart and altogether masterful No. 7 (1954) combines mocking humor, pained reverie and the sort of instrumental brilliance that marks its immediate predecessor, the First Cello Concerto.

No. 9 (1960), in five thematically linked movements played without pause, is, however, merely workmanlike, with a doggedly upbeat central allegretto movement that smacks rather of “official” Soviet music of an earlier era.

The visitors from Moscow made no distinctions of quality among the three works. All were played as if deserving of the most profound musicianship. Which, perhaps, is the only way to play any music.