A disconcerting experience

Usually I know what I am going to be listening to; this time I didn't. For some reason, getting exhausted or blasée after so many other concerts in the festival, I'd forgotten to bring a printout of their programme with me when I arrived at the concert hall to hear the prestigious Borodin Quartet play, last week. I had the vague recollection that something by Schubert was going to be performed.

When the four Russian gentlemen began playing the first item, my first (correct) impression was that this wasn't Schubert, or if it was, it must be early Schubert. Puzzled, I noted "multiple variations on a folksy theme, dance rhythms" but that didn't seem to be an adequate description of this music, during which the musicians kept stopping and starting with quite long pauses between the short movements, or whatever they were. Not a conventional string quartet by any means.

The Moscow Conservatory in 1940

The second item was similarly confusing, again with big pauses (no applause) between the mumerous sections of whatever we were hearing. They played faultlessly, but the music left me rather cold, perhaps because, sitting near the front, I was put off by the lack of eye-contact between the first violinist and the other quartet members on stage, so different from the way the younger Bennewitz Quartet had interacted with one another. In general, the body-language of the Borodin Quartet is severe: very little swaying to the music, no smiles. Either the leader of the group is emotionally inhibited, or it is not the done thing to be demonstrative in their milieu (the Moscow Conservatory). Or were they simply too tired, from having to play while jet lagged. Their faces remained terribly serious even when bowing to the audience's applause.

After the interval a more traditional string quartet was played, with seemingly more depth to it. I recognised parts of the music, but once again failed to identify it. It wasn't till I reached the door to the next concert of the day that I got the chance to look at the programme --- the attendant at the table let me take a photo of it! --- that I realised that what I had been failing to recognise was Schubert's Rosamunde Quartet, D.804, some of which was based on the Rosamunde Overture.

The two items in the first half of the concert had been suites, Tchaikovsky's Op. 39, a Children's Album, and a medley of rather similar Minuets (5 of) and Trios (6 of) by Schubert. No wonder I had lost count of all the "movements"!