OUTCAST Matangi Quartet
Schnittke; Silvestrov; Shostakovich Matangi Quartet Matangi Music / Pias (2022) New this month is Matangi Quartet’s selection of Russian and Ukrainian works titled ‘Outcast’. The ‘Andante’ of Schnittke’s ‘String Quartet No.3’ twists or rather tangles itself around motifs from di Lasso, Beethoven, Bach, and Shostakovich. Shades of darkness, and back again, intertwined tonalities and styles. Schnitte’s ‘Polystylism’ is relentlessly edgy although cleverly bound by a more cohesive rhythmic ‘regularity’. In the second movement, ‘Agitato’, the effect is stunning. Again more darkness than light but emotionally transportive. Distinct to this writer are echoes of violence and pain, purposeful not contrived. ‘Agitato’ “serves as a culmination of the various polystylistic ideas, improved and introduced in various contrasting textures compared to the initial motivic material of movement I…” (Herndon) The final movement ‘Pesante’ is just as spine-tingling via the contrast of tonal dimensions in jux