Arcadia Quartet: Weinberg

The Strad Issue: June 2025

Description: Another invaluable instalment in a consistently impressive cycle

Musicians: Arcadia Quartet

Works: Weinberg: String Quartets vol.5: no.3, no.9, no.14; Improvisation and Romance

Catalogue number: CHANDOS CHAN20328

Are these quartets undervalued? Certainly. Weinberg’s Third Quartet leaps off the page with its striking opening unison. The writing is quite knotty in texture, requiring lean timbres from the performers for the lines to be cohesive. By adopting limited vibrato, the Arcadia delivers great clarity and energy, proving to be a truly worthy advocate of Weinberg and remarkably under the skin of his musical idiom.

An arresting and rhythmically insistent motif dominates the opening movement of the Ninth Quartet, which is given an electrifying rendition. Similarly dazzling playing graces the pizzicato opening of the Allegretto, with its stylistic nods to Shostakovich. Sadness is never far from the surface, the desolate Andante tortuously weaving its whispering, folk-like melody. In stark contrast, political expediency during the later years of Stalin’s rule entailed a more approachable melodic language, which is presented in the winning Improvisation and Romance, with strong hints of Myaskovsky’s Romantic idiom.

Weinberg’s music, following his experience of imprisonment, became harsher and bleaker. The angular first movement of his Quartet no.14 hits hard, with a squeeze-box effect of escalating chordal discords that recalls Shostakovich pupil Galina Ustvolskaya’s uncompromising Grand Duet for cello and piano. What is so impressive about this album is the way that the Arcadia Quartet depicts Weinberg’s stylistic journey towards this uncompromising musical language.

JOANNE TALBOT