Part b

John Storgårds’s acclaimed series of Shostakovich symphonies continues with this recording of Symphony No. 13. The BBC Philharmonic is joined by the bass-baritone Albert Dohmen and the Estonian National Male Choir. The symphony, subtitled ‘Babiy Yar’, caused a great deal of tension and controversy in the lead-up to its première, in December 1962 – not because of the music, but the poetry. Shostakovich had chosen to set Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Babiy Yar. Ostensibly an outraged response to the lack of a memorial for the thousands of Jews murdered by the Nazis and dumped in a ravine near Kyiv, the poem implicitly criticised the anti-Semitism then still rife in the Soviet Union.

Of four living composers here, one is less well known. Like the Borusan Quartet itself, Hasan Uçarsu (born 1965) is Turkish. His String Quartet No 2 “The Untold” consists of two short, pensive outer movements – called epilogue and prologue – and two questing, energetic central movements full of Anatolian folk inspiration. Arvo Pärt’s Summa is a string version of a meditative vocal piece from 1977. Pēteris Vasks, like Pärt, found his own spiritual voice within or despite the restrictive Soviet aesthetic, as witnessed in his poignant String Quartet No 4. Philip Glass, in contrast, wrote his Quartet No 2, robustly minimalist, as stage music for an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novel Company. A fascinating, engagingly played quartet of quartets.

Violinists Simone Lamsma and Candida Thompson explore connections between J.S. Bach and Arvo Pärt on their new release Pärt über Bach with Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Arvo Pärt’s groundbreaking Tabula Rasa is presented alongside Bach’s Concerto for Oboe and Violin in the version for 2 violins, and Pärt’s own Collage über B-A-C-H , written in 1964 wherein the Estonian master intertwines his own modernist music with phrases from J.S. Bach’s music.