Reviews for
GMCD 7179 - Borodin - Dvorak
The St. Petersbourg Chamber Players

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Dvorak is everywhere and always the melodist, and while the Sony disc, featuring "all-star band" of Emanuel Ax, Isac Stern, Jaime Laredo and Yo-Yo Ma are certainly the more refined and elegant(and more sweetly lyrical), there is an energy and rawness to the performance of the St. Petersburg Chamber Players that gets closer to the heart of Dvorak's folk inspirations.

The Sony recording features more flexible tempos in the opening movement, while the Guild disc is a mix of fire and melodicism. The tender melody of the Lento is sweetly played by Laredo et al for Sony, while the Guild recording has the piano more forward - to interesting effect. There's some troubling siccato work once in Stern's playing in the third movement, and there's a sense of eagerness with which the more polished and famous players seize on the Slavic quality of the finale. One almost hears the foot stomping in the St. Petersburg quarter performance.

Stern is joined by pianist Robert McDonald for some beautifully expressive Dvorak works on the Sony recording (the Romantic Pieces, op .75 and the Sonatina, Op. 100) while the St Petersburg players put their raw energies to work on some music by Borodin (the unfinished Piano Trio in G and the C minor Piano Quartet)

Borodin Grand Trio in G, Piano Quintet in C minor
Dvorák Piano Quartet No. 2 in E flat, B162.
St Petersburg Chamber Players (Ilya loff, Michael Appleman, violins; Alexei Ludevig, viola; Alexei Massarsky, cello; lgor Uryash, piano).
Guild GMCD7179 (full price, 1 hour 11 minutes).
ProducerlEngineer Vladimir Ryabenko. Date August 1999.

Dvorák marked the first movement of his E flat Piano Quartet Allegro con fuoco, but rather than being merely fiery this is something of a conflagration. The string players set off forcefully with their octave figure, forte, but when they are joined by the piano in the fourth bar, Igor Uryash interprets the fortissimo as if it were twice as loud as that, and throughout this movement he maintains a violence of attack that does the music no favours. Though a good deal of its nature does depend upon the opposition of strings and piano, this is a dialogue that becomes almost an altercation. Much the same occurs in parts of the finale, and it is in the Lento that the players are at their most responsive. So far from being insensitive to the music, they have good appreciation of its form, and, especially when Dvorák is almost too lavish with his invention in this Lento ('the melodies just surged upon me'), clear heads are needed.

That this brusqueness derives chiefly from the pianist is confirmed in Borodin's Piano Quintet, though here he is more restrained. It is an oddly constructed piece, consisting of an Andante, a Scherzo, then a finale that may at one stage have been intended as a first movement. The players bring it off very well, making the comparatively short Andante (just on five minutes) seem a reflective introduction to the liveliness of the Scherzo and the long (ten-minute) finale. If it does, nevertheless, sound unfinished, the String Trio is much more so. Borodin wrote four string trios for the unusual combination of two violins and cello; one is lost, and this is the second, consisting of an Allegro and an Andante with a fragmentary Scherzo (not here attempted). As is now usual, when the pieces get a hearing at all, it is in a version for the more conventional form of violin, viola and cello, which works well. The recording is clear and well balanced throughout.                                                                                                                                                             John Warrack