Shostakovich: Quartet No 3; Beethoven: Quartet in E Minor Op 59 No 2

The Valentin Berlinsky Quartet continue their pairing of Shostakovich and Beethoven on disc. The five movements of Shostakovich's Third Quartet of 1946 originally carried subtitles related to the second World War, the innocence of the first movement ("Calm unawareness") followed by two insistent and progressively black scherzos, a mournful Adagio ("Homage to the dead") and a ruminative finale ("Why? And for what?"). The Berlinsky's account is strongly characterised, and some of its grit seems to have filtered over into the opening movement of Beethoven's E minor Rasumovsky Quartet, which is rather stiffly bracing. The rest of the Beethoven is finely done. url.ie/e8oo