Reflections - Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

Reflections - Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

RCD1099 (Rubicon Classics, CD)

FIRST RELEASE (25 November 2022)

Playing time: 61'12"
Tracks: 13
Booklet pages: 10
℗ 2022 Dudok Quartet
© 2022 Rubicon Classics Ltd
Main country of recording: Netherlands
Country of manufacture: European Union
Reviewer: Geoff Pearce
Review of Reflections - Dudok Quartet Amsterdam published on 13 December 2022


Listen: Bacewicz: (Allegro giocoso) (String Quartet No 4) (RCD1099 track 13, 0:02-0:55)

Dudok Quartet Amsterdam:
Judith van Driel, violin
Marleen Wester, violin
Marie-Louise de Jong, viola
David Faber, cello

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975):

String Quartet No 5 in B flat, Op92
1 Allegro non troppo -
2 Andante - Andantino -
3 Moderato – Allegretto – Andante

Dmitri Shostakovich, arranged by Judith van Driel and David Faber:

Twenty Four Preludes Op 34
4 No 10 in C sharp minor
5 No 15 in D flat
6 No 14 in F sharp minor (transposed from E flat minor)
7 No 5 in D
8 No 16 in B flat minor
9 No 24 in D minor
10 No 17 in A flat

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969):

String Quartet No 4
11 Andante - Allegro moderato - Allegro energico
12 Andante
13 (Allegro giocoso)

'As a string quartet of the 21st century, we are searching for the meaning of the music we perform. Our goal is to convey the image which emanates from the music in the most authentic way. As a kind of time-transcending minstrel, the Quartet is continuously searching for the best ways to reflect the music from the past, with a new meaning and for a contemporary audience' - Dudok Quartet Amsterdam.

On a challenging and thought provoking new album, the Dudoks couple two composers who famously masked their true feelings in their music. Shostakovich's famous ambiguities are present in his fifth quartet of 1951, composed at the same time as the first violin concerto and the tenth symphony. Bacewicz's fourth quartet, written shortly after the oppression of the Poles in the late 1940s by the Soviet regime, is full of folk music influences - Bacewicz had a keen interest in traditional music which spared her from any aggravation from the Polish puppet regime - and was therefore 'acceptable' to the authorities. But she also erects a hall of mirrors around the work to mask her true emotions. Is this happy music? Is it masking something darker? That the composer was a fine violinist is clearly apparent in the fourth quartet which did much to establish her reputation.

Recorded 9–11 May 2022 at De Buitensociëteit, Zutphen, Netherlands