Shostakovich Day, classical review: Total immersion event revels in intelligence and virtuosity

Shostakovich Day, Milton Court, London

The Cuarteto Casals were breathtaking in their purity of intonation and subtlety of their shaping and shading (cuartetocasals.com)

‘Total immersion day’ sounds grim, but nothing could have been more pleasurable than this brilliantly-conceived event starring the Spanish Cuarteto Casals and the Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov. Strung together by Gerard McBurney with reminiscences, a profusion of photographs, film footage of Shostakovich talking and playing, a recording of Anna Akhmatova reading her poem in praise of the composer, and with a Komsomol propaganda film showing what shenanigans the composer’s art was sometimes harnessed to, the presentation set the music vividly in context, and we listened armed with fresh intelligence.

We got five string quartets, the Piano Quintet, and the entire cycle of Preludes and Fugues for solo piano; the playing was, quite simply, out of this world. In a non-stop blaze of virtuosity Melnikov brought out all that Shostakovich had owed to Bach, and all that he had added to Bach’s art-form.

Meanwhile, by the purity of their intonation and the subtlety of their shaping and shading, the Cuarteto Casals took the breath away; the pervasive dying fall of the Eighth Quartet, which Shostakovich described as his memorial to himself, rang out with a majestic blend of beauty and authority. The Piano Quintet was by turns sardonic, sinister, and irresistibly playful.