The St Petersburg Quartet confirms its sinewy and extrovert approach in this second instalment of its Shostakovich cycle. The short opening movement of the Fourth Quartet is characteristically nervy, intense in a way that threatens intonation, but betokens real commitment to the cause. While the outer sections of its finale are deliberately paced, the central climax presses home excitedly, parting company with most recent accounts. Robert Matthew Walker's serious-minded booklet notes commend the music's lucidity and subtlety, aspects which the St Petersburg might be thought to underplay in its quest for folkish immediacy. Some of the Borodin's fabled nobility and focus is lost, but you won't be bored. The Sixth is arguably more successful, its wistful, would-be serenity admirably caught.
The Eighth Quartet completes the programme. By far the most familiar of the 15, it remains to some degree a work apart. Revisionist orthodoxy presents it as not so much a memorial to the victims of totalitarianism and war, as an anti-Communist tract-cum-suicide note. Without, perhaps, plumbing the depths of despair, the St Petersburg turns in a performance of winning directness, full of colour and contrast in a score more often painted in shades of grey. The second movement, a real Allegro molto here, explodes with all the ferocity you could hope for, and it has succeeded by being a memorably inflected waltz. The reluctance to linger in the framing Largos is typical of this Quartet.
Hyperion's Russian-made recordings are technically impressive, though not as perfectly judged as BIS's for the Yggdrasil. The Scandinavians' equally tight (if less strongly characterised) playing in No 8 makes a rather different appeal. There's red meat on offer in St Petersburg, but look elsewhere for coolheaded exegesis.'