Borodin Quartet take their history lessons seriously
Sometimes it's hard to shake the notoriety of your past. Especially when that past involves playing at Stalin's funeral at the Kremlin. Or signing an oath of allegiance - in blood, no less. Or working alongside Dmitri Shostakovich.
The legendary Borodin Quartet, hailed as "the gold standard for Russian music", carry the weight of the past on their shoulders as they continue their Australia-wide tour.
But as violist Igor Naidin says: "It's not a burden but rather a responsibility."
The Borodin Quartet was formed by four students at the Moscow Conservatory in 1944, although it only adopted its distinctive name, with the permission of the Ministry of Culture, in 1955.
Naidin joined in 1995 when his predecessor and teacher, Dmitri Shebalin, retired. He was not the first new recruit: in 1976 first violin Rostislav Dubinsky emigrated to the West and, over the next few decades, all but cellist Valentin Berlinsky moved on.
Berlinsky was the last one standing for their most recent tour of Australia, in 2006. His death in 2008 marked the end of a continuous line stretching back to the group's formation in 1944.
Is it possible for the ensemble to keep in touch with its tradition, its institutional memories? Should it?
Naidin is equivocal.
"Let's say we're definitely careful, always performing and doing our best in playing [Shostakovich's] music," he says. "But since we were all born and brought up in the Soviet Union, not in Russia, we, being so much younger than Shostakovich himself, can never live the real lifetime where he was living through ... It was a different time, a different everything."
He sketches out the fastidiousness with which the group has cherished those precious years working directly with Shostakovich.
"Our great predecessors were younger than Shostakovich. He gave them his blessing, let's say, for performing this way and not another way and this has been carefully passed down the generations, one by one."
That's why, for Naidin, a recording by the Borodin Quartet is instantly recognisable.
"First you hear it and say, 'this is us', and then 'which generation?' a second later."
There are, of course, other reasons why the quartet has such a signature sound. Today, as always, all four musicians are products of the Moscow Conservatory.
"Not only Russia, not only Moscow, but Moscow Conservatory," Naidin says. "Our teachers, though a different generation, are students of previous teachers. Moscow Conservatory itself is part of the Russian School."
On their last Australian tour the quartet played Shostakovich's Quartet No.8, a desolate meditation written after he finally – and reluctantly - joined the Communist Party. The Ninth Quartet is, by contrast, something of a beginning.
It is dedicated to Irina Supinskaya, his third wife, whom he married in 1962 and who gave him a renewed energy for life in his final years.
"It is typical Shostakovich, very full of energy," Naidin says, "with the brightest finale … It's one of the very few quartets which ends up in full energy mode."
It is paired with Beethoven's String Quartet No.13, another work at the heart of the quartet's tradition.
Because, in the end, whether in spite of or because of their history, it's not up to the Borodin Quartet to define themselves.
It is, as Naidin says, up to critics and audiences.
The Borodin Quartet, City Recital Hall, October 1 and 6
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