They have only three more quartets left to complete, next year, one of the feats of their repertoire: the comprehensive quartets of Shostakovich. The Gerhard Quartet returns this Thursday to the Festival of Torroella de Montgrí, and for the second time in this edition, with quartets no. 10, 11 and 12 of the Russian musician. A creator who has proven essential for a formation in the stage of interpretative maturity.
The qualitative evolution of his approach to this musical corpus, by no means simple, of 15 quartets has been meteoric since last year these four Catalan musicians -known from childhood and from the Esmuc- began to offer it with two concerts a year, first in Torroella and then in the San Sebastián Musical Fortnight, which was the origin of the commission. A formula that is repeated this year, after his performances at the Empordà festival on August 3 and this Thursday the 10th.
The audience at the Auditori Espai Ter de Torroella tuned in in a very special way with the weightlessness of the quartet no. 10, in which the ensemble -which bears the name of one of the most international Catalan composers of the 20th century- seemed not to respond to the firmness of sound with which Shostakovich is usually interpreted, precisely because it is a piece that seems to be fading away.
The Gerhards reaffirmed their special sensitivity when approaching the genius who survived the aesthetic pressures of Stalinism and, in no. 11 -the one with the most movements, all of them intertwined-, embroidered a beautiful transition to the explosive no. 12 that reserved for the second part.
And its number is related to its structure, since this quartet escapes, like many of those by late Shostakovich, from the conventional structure and opens with a hint of twelve-tone. Which, since it would have been a reason for censorship, here makes it a row of 12 tones that the cello plays before entering a tonal theme. Composed in 1968 and dedicated -as he used to do- to a member of the acclaimed Beethoven Quartet who premiered his works, it contains at the beginning 34 bars of the first violin solo, which are the 34 years that the violinist Dmitri Tsyganov spent in the formation until his death. .
This long piece generates a constant crescendo that infected Torroella’s audience, which erupted into prolonged applause and bravos that compelled the members of the Gerhard -Lluís Castán and Judit Bardolet (violins), Miquel Jordà (viola) and Jesús Miralles (cello) – to come out four times to say hello, before offering a “calmer” encore, as Castán announced, with a movement from Arcadiana by Thomas Adès.
“This integral is being an enormous experience, perhaps the greatest artistically that we have never had as a quartet”, commented Bardolet in the intensity of the moment. Torroella is, after all, the place where they make their debut in this enormous work that supposes a total immersion in the language of Shostakóvich. “We want to go out prepared, as if we had played it two hundred times.” Hence, every year they immerse themselves in this project just after Easter.
Of the 15, 13 have already been performed, although they have not been listed in order. “It is a rarity that from 10 to 12 they have been followed. In general we have looked for emotional contrasts, of tempos and duration. Because each one is unique, a work of art, with a very thought-out structure and form. We have discovered a lot of Shostakovich through his music, someone introverted, sensitive, extremely intelligent,” Bardolet continues.
This is the first integral that the Gerhard Quartet has faced – “yes, because Robert Gerhard only has two quartets” – and he experiences having a large volume of work and music. “The work we do with one of these quartets adds up to the next ones. We had never faced something so big. We feel much more mature now than last year in Shostakóvich, it is a very extensive work that bears many fruits.”
“To understand and interpret him you have to get into his world. Once you’re inside, it makes perfect sense. It’s something magical,” adds Jordà. “We are more and more in love with Shostakóvich”, they add before undertaking the always difficult task of finding an open place where they can eat a good T-bone steak, if possible. The investment of energy and passion needs its reward.
