The Casals quartet performs Shostakóvich: “His music is crossed by fear and repression” | Culture | EUROtoday

The members of the Casals quartet are used to at all times take two steps forward. They have been, in spite of everything, who put in time a camer custom that in Spain had virtually a century late. And since then, 28 years in the past, time has run in its favor. When they obtain us in one of many lecture rooms of the tremolo faculty in Barcelona to speak concerning the second installment of their integral of the quartets of Shostakóvich (from No. 6 to 12) we discover within the trails the night time of the night time of the Quince. “His idea was to write 24, one for each hue, like Bach in The well -tempered key“Says the Viloncherist Arnau Tomàs.” But life did not give him more, and perhaps there would be nothing more to say after this. “

Someone might think that they have waited for the right time to address this repertoire with sufficient maturity if it weren’t because Shostakóvich’s music has accompanied them since their beginnings. “Already in the first presentation concert we offered in Toledo, back in 1997, we played the Current n”, Recalls the violinist Vera Martínez Mehner. It was really the Harmonia Mundi document one who proposed to undertake the cycle after the phases of the twenty fifth anniversary of the group.

For the recording they chose the Courahie, an old factory of the convener of the Cultural Center and has a small concert hall in an old industrial belt warehouse. “It is a really particular place in the midst of the sphere, between horses and chickens,” they recreate among all. “Like an awesome farmhouse in the midst of nowhere.” The choice was not accidental: “We have been searching for a spot that supplied us the tranquility of the research with the strain and warmth of a full room.” In the mornings they adjusted the details of each shot with the sound coach and, at night, they delivered to the vertigo of the live. “This hybrid method confirmed what we already knew: that the music of Shostakóvich feels excellent,” they explain.

It was during one of those sessions when Jonathan Brown, a violist of Casals since 2002 (replacing Miguel da Silva, who in turn had taken the witness of Oriol Sans), communicated their decision to leave the project. “It was a really onerous yr, during which many issues received collectively, additionally personally,” confesses Arnau, the eldest of the Tomàs brothers and founder, together with Abel and Vera, of the quartet during his stage of students at the Reina Sofía School in Madrid. “His departure caught us abruptly and with hardly any response time, in the midst of a recording and level to embark on a tour of Latin America,” he says in reference to the concerts they end in Chile, Colombia and Peru.

Cristina Cordero, the new member of the group, has traveled with them. “I at all times dreamed of being a part of a set like Casals, however at my age I had already dominated out that chance,” confesses the 27 -year -old violist, who was not born when his teammates began to break through the concert halls of Europe. “Then I acquired the decision that modified every little thing,” explains Cordero, former collaborator of the formation. The relay was the fastest and most discreet, without auditions or communications on social networks. “When my incorporation was formally introduced, we had been taking part in collectively for months,” he acknowledges with a smile on his face: “There was no courtship: just one match adopted by a plethoric sure I would like”.

The marriage is among the many metaphors that Sonia Simmenauer, International Agent of Casals and creator of Live in a quartetto explain this distinctive type of inventive coexistence. “The key is that trust never derives in disrespect, as in a couple,” says Martínez Mehner. “And here things are not voted, they are vetoed,” he provides, amongst laughs, Arnau Tomàs: “It makes no sense that three are in favor of something and one against.” Faced with the democratic very best, they domesticate the dangerous artwork of diplomacy. “For the final of the London contest we chose the Cuarteto No. From Shostakóvich knowing that Walter Levin, who was part of the jury, didn’t stand it. ”The play did well.

Unlike their symphonies, subjected to the scrutiny of the highly Soviet instances, the quartets of the Russian composer can be read as an intimate diary. “These scores served as a check laboratory for every little thing that might not be allowed in an orchestra,” says the cellist. “We don’t discover in them a single naive gesture: every little thing is crossed by concern, repression, contradiction and duel.” Not even Stalin’s death in 1953, after which he composed the Cuartete no 6 That opens this compilation, managed to dilute the oppressive atmosphere at all. “A sure sense of aid is perceived, however the type doesn’t change, it’s extremely secure: Shostakóvich continues to be shostakóvich,” he says.

The registration contains six especially revealing works of the Shostakóvich catalog, such as the Current nwhich he composed in three days after his forced income in the Communist Party. “The DSCH motive [acrónimo musical que equivale a las notas Re-Mi bemol-Do-Si conforme al sistema alemán] Profile a devastating portrait that sounds like Requiem of itself, ”reflects the violinist. From there, the quartets become more abstract and ambitious, as demonstrated by the block structure of the block of the block of the nº 9; the rhythmic violence of the next, dedicated to Mieczysław Weinberg; The mosaic complex (“as a damaged sleep,” says Martínez Mehner) that shapes the nº 11and the symphonic dimension, with its dodecaphonic flashes, of the nº 12.

Some of these pieces will sound in the recitals that this summer will lead to the Casals quartet for the Salzburg Festivals (August 11), Pollença (14), San Sebastián (21) and Vilabertrán (31) as an advance of the integral they will offer, next season, in Madrid and Valencia, coinciding with the publication of the third volume dedicated to Shostakóvich, to whom they define at some point clarity and transparency, such as “Haydn of the 20 th century.” By then they will be at the gates of the 150th anniversary of Pau Casals and with the 30 years of the training around the corner. They have not yet decided, but everything seems to indicate that it will be a celebration to the Hungarian: “Here Bartók and Kurtág are at all times welcome.”