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Shostakovich: The String Quartets | 
 enlarge | Creator: Dmitry Shostakovich
Label: DG
Category: Music
List Price: $39.98
Buy New: $35.99
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 7319
Format: Box Set
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 5
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 000638802
UPC: 028947574071
EAN: 0028947574071
ASIN: B000F3T7RE
Release Date: May 16, 2006
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Different...Maybe you'll like this approach, maybe you won't January 26, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
It's hard to assign stars to this set because it's just a different approach from the three other sets I own (Borodin, Fitzwilliam, Brodsky]. Whereas the others tend to emphasize the dramatic, soulful, and sarcastic elements of the Shostakovich, the Emerson Quartet, to some extent, downplays these while moving through the music at a noticeably brisker tempo.
The result is that some features of the music are newly revealed and others are obscured. The biggest difference is in tempo (the Emersons are without a doubt the speediest). After this, one notices the difference in virtuosity (the Emersons have technique to burn, not that there are glaring deficiencies in any of the other groups).
The Emerson's don't make this music sound like Haydn by any stretch, but they do make it sound less anguished and spiritual. The flip side of this is that the music will seem less weird to listeners who don't crave anguished sounding string quartets.
In the end, I keep going back to the readings that are starker and that highlight the perverse aspects of the music (at times it even reminds me of Carl Stalling's comic scores for the classic Warner Bros. cartoons). Shostakovich put a lot of humor into these pieces, and the mood often shifts rapidly between silly-sounding runs and heart-breaking, almost operatic melodies underpinned by beautiful, slow-moving harmonies. I like the readings that point up these contrasts; others may think the Emersons wisely avoid the temptation to over-dramatize the music and walk a more tasteful line.
Also, my very favorite interpretations benefit from very careful studio engineering and a touch of reverb. Somehow, these works almost demand good sound and perfect balances to show what they are about; that's not alway the case (I'm often happy listening to historical piano recordings from the 1930s and 1940s, for example). The Emerson set is of course live, and while the sound is great for a concert recording, the instrumental voices are not as balanced as I'd like.
While I wouldn't recommend this set to someone looking to experience this music for the first time, I'm glad it's available.
 American-Style Borscht...with a Dash of Hot Sauce August 1, 2007
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Dmitri Shostakovich, my favorite 20th century composer, wrote a series of fifteen string quartets that span his entire career. These are alternately searing, violent, brooding, fiery, introspective works that run the gamut of human emotion and experience -- hardly beautiful, and often quite depressing. But man, do they pack a wallop! They're often considered the greatest creations in the string quartet genre since Beethoven, and it's easy to see why.
These were recorded in live performance in three separate years ('94, '98, and '99) at the summer Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. The playing is not only passionate and precise, but imbued with a palpable intensity. There's no audible hint of an audience, but applause is included judiciously at the conclusion of several of the works. The recording is close-up and very vivid, though not quite in-your-face; there's adequate space around the instruments to make listening comfortable. Any closer and you'd be hurled against the back wall!
This re-issued box set retails at less than half that of the original release. Even though I already have the quartets on separate older discs by various other groups, the Emersons give them that slap of American modernism quite apart from the Slavic flavor of a native Russian group like the Borodin Quartet. Yes, if one is familiar with these works, one can actually hear and feel the difference. I've read some reviewers here, as well as professional critics, speak of the Emersons' lack of a "Russian soul"; I have no idea what that means. I suppose if one has to ask....
Cruel Joke January 19, 2007
4 out of 29 found this review helpful
I heard this set of discs elsewhere. I tried to send them to my niece twice as a Christmas present in Paris, France. The delivery by U.P.S. was never accomplished owing to U.P.S. retuning the items to your warehouse too rapidly for my niece to arrainge delivery. I was nonetheless charged for one of these deliveries and just don't want to exhaust the energy to contest this charge, having tried that already. Be very sure that amazon won't spring back to life for my pocketbook.
The first--and still greatest?--modernist readings November 13, 2006
30 out of 34 found this review helpful
This re-issue at bargain price of the Emerson's complete Shostakovich quartet cycle is a reminder that their breakthrough readings are roughly a decade old now (the set was taped in concert from Aspen 1994-99). Instead of Russian soul we get clean, often faster interpretations that brought out Shostakovich's modernist side, aided by the ultra virtuosity of the playing. In the meantime, however, other groups like the St. Lawrence and Hagen Quartets have made even more severe, biting, stark, haunted, and tragic recordings of selected works from the fifteen quartets. This doesn't mean the Emersons have been eclipsed, only that they started a trend that shows no sign of ending.
Also, I'd like to point out that if you want the best all-around modern set from a Russian group. the Shostakovich Quartet, which recorded for Olympia, can now be found on bargain reissues from Regis (Berkshire Record Outlet offers the complete quartets for $20). The SQ play beautifully, are well recorded, and imbue Shostakovich's music with more emotional intensity than the cooler Emersons. By comparison, the old standby set from the Fitzwilliam Quartet on Decca seems dated and stodgy. The choice for me comes down to 1. Emerson complete cycle 2. Shostakovich Quartet complete cycle or 3. Pick and choose among outstanding individual readings from the St. Lawrence, Kronos, Hagen, and of course older Soviet groups like the Borodin and Beethoven Quartets. That's just a thumbnail sketch. Many die-hard fans won't give up their beloved Emerson cycle, while older aficinados would never part with their traditional Soviet favorites.
Great music, great performance October 20, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I've been through this collection three times so far and am delighted with it in every aspect. True, I haven't picked up the scores yet, which would add a great deal, but even short of that I can recommend this performance both from an acoustic and aesthetic point of view. And the music, of course, speaks for itself. Big bonus which shouldn't be is that the discs are pressed (burned?) in numerical order 1 through 15 so you don't have to keep switching discs like you do with, say, the Alban Berg Beethoven integral.
Can't think of a single complaint, and I've tried! OK, there is one. I'm afraid that the notes that accompany the recording are pretty uninformative. A little historical fact followed by vague and misleading metaphorical descriptions are about the sum of it. True, Shostakovich scholarship is just beginning so there is little to draw on, but still...
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