Nikolai Myaskovsky - Complete String Quartets Vol.3 (Taneyev Quartet)

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Nikolai Myaskovsky - Complete String Quartets Vol.3 (Taneyev Quartet)

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The Op. 55 Quartet, No. 7, was written in 1941 in the Caucasus where he had been sent and where he made a thorough study of local folk music (indeed incorporating a local Kabarda folk song into the slow movement). Lyrical with a few pleasing harmonic quirks it has an opening movement that perhaps over quotes, to its ultimate structural damage, an opening theme incapable of sustaining fully subsequent developmental potential. The second movement is an engagingly swinging affair; I can certainly imagine it being played at a somewhat faster tempo than the Taneyev Quartet essay even at the slight risk of rushed articulation – the risks may well be outweighed by the musical benefits of contrast and vigorous accenting at speed. A scurrying figure nicely winds down the compass until it finally reaches the cello line where it expires. The third movement includes that North Caucasus folk song and also a little pepper, musically speaking, to the slow movement. It is beautifully harmonised and flows in a slow incremental ascent, dynamically, its line and texture unimpeded and inevitable. The fourth is a fast movement, reflective but resilient, harmonically somewhat piquant. A unison call to arms announces the cello’s succeeding frisky foray followed by the other strings leading to a triumphantly untroubled conclusion. Marking no especial advance on the previous quartets the Seventh is something of a reminiscence, harking back to Taneyev and Glazunov, an absorbent rather than innovatory work – indeed something perhaps less even than absorbent in its simplicity and nostalgia.

The Eighth Quartet was completed in the following year and dedicated to the memory of a friend. Elegiac therefore in outline it still contains more than its fair share of formal surprises. The opening movement’s lyricism – note the second violin’s distinctive scrap of melody – is wistful and more than somewhat reminiscent of Tchaikovsky. The slow movement’s beautiful melody is accompanied by thrummed lower strings and as the violin arches its song the other voices play a winding counterpoint; the more insistent, contrastive, middle section inflects that lyricism with increased levels of meaning before the return of the opening theme of the movement. The finale is determined and robust with a second subject like a flecked folk song with some enchanting shards of song shared out between the four voices – and its final appearance is transferred to the viola, the solo becoming healthily withdrawn as Miaskovsky, in time-honoured cyclical fashion, brings finally a return of the first movement’s opening theme and a sense of evolution and inevitability to the syntax and musical argument.

Jonathan Woolf @ Musicweb-international.com