Search - Dmitry Shostakovich, Manhattan String Quartet :: Shostakovich: String Quartets Nos. 6, 7, 8

Extraordinary sensitivity and intellectual passion

Joan Rogers | Portland, OR United States | 11/04/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Manhattan String Quartet, known for its thoughtful interpretation of 20th-century works, brings its best to Shostakovich. The composer's highly intelligent, searching emotional narratives come to brilliant life; the range of tone and color that the players coax from the strings is truly breathtaking -- you'll hear a viola sound exactly like a clarinet, and a violin mimic an air-raid siren. These recordings are so immediate, vivid, and committed that they are almost unbearable at times -- Shostakovich's pain and loss, his incredible ability to convey through sound the despair and death of the human spirit in captivity -- these challenging emotions are brought out with exquisite nuance and a matchless sense of coherence."

The whole cycle is a must-hear!

J. Anderson | Monterey, CA USA | 08/28/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I purchased the Manhattan Quartet's edition of Shostakovich's fifteen quartets as a boxed set of five CDs. I notice Amazon doesn't sell the set, rather individual CDs, certain of which appear to be no longer offered. That's a pity, because to really reach the heart of this amazing body of work, one needs to listen to the cycle of Quartets as a whole, if not at one sitting, certainly of a piece. Taken thus, these discs contain a recorded rendering of these masterpieces that is without peer. What the Manhattan String Quartet occasionally lacks in the sap of sage experience, it more than makes up for in clarity of judgment, and ardent unity of purpose. Clean, decisive playing that is lean and intelligent, and unafraid of Shostakovich's inner world, rather more often appearing to relish it, reinvent it, even cherish it in an unsentimental way. Not that the interpretation is stark, more that it is polished with requisite thought and attention to detail, enough to leave one in the arms of satisfaction, and yet hungry. Surely such is the nature of a kind of wild and noble ensemble playing perfectly suited to the wayward inner leanings of these so loved quartets. I think the earlier quartets are here the more successful ones, especially Nos. 4, 6 & 7. The later quartets seem to suffer perhaps, and just a bit, from a kind of bitter distraction, without intending too harsh a criticism upon the point, though indeed the Fourteenth is redemptive. I have always felt Shostakovich's string quartets to be his "Gulag Archipelago", so personally truthful are they, almost to the point of being propitiary. The Manhattan String Quartet stages a compellingly beautiful whole liturgy of their incomparable parts. Highest recommendation!"

Among the best after the Borodin Quartet

Howard G Brown | Port St. Lucie, FL USA | 07/12/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Let's face it, only the Borodin Quartet seems to inhabit this music as no other ensemble can. They seem to know that, at this bar Dmitri Dmitrivich shed a tear -- and here his hand trembled, there the manuscript is spotted with vodka, and now we must all play like the gypsies he heard that time in the Crimea...No western quartet can approach that kind of understanding. But the Manhattan quartet makes fine music -- often glowing, often darkly sad or infused with anger -- of the notes on the page. I think it is equal to the level of the Fitzwilliam and Emerson Quartet recordings -- and I mean the complete set, not this volume alone."