Borodins shine in concert with Russian flair

Borodin String Quartet Music & Beyond Dominion-Chalmers, Sunday at 8 p.m.

It’s not too surprising that Russia’s finest string quartet, some might say the world’s finest, plays a lot of Russian music. They play other things as well, but their program in Dominion-Chalmers on the penultimate evening of this year’s Music and Beyond was given to Myaskovsky, Glinka and, appropriately, Borodin. Since the last of these composers only wrote two string quartets, they don’t play him as often as you might think, though when they do ...

But first there was the String Quartet no. 2 in F by Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857). It’s a fairly standard piece, rather in the fashion of Haydn or early Schubert, but it has something of a Russian flavour.

Glinka was the first Russian composer of any consequence to write what we have come to call classical music. His music isn’t often heard in the West anymore, though occasionally someone mounts a production of his operas Russlan and Ludmila or A Life for the Tsar.

The Borodins didn’t plumb the score for depths that it doesn’t possess, but they played it beautifully (surprise, surprise). I’m not sure that they know any other way to play.

Next came the Quartet no. 13 in A minor, op. 86 by Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950). Although this composer was a close contemporary of Barto(aigu)k, the music in this quartet is romantically melodic and conservative harmonically. These things undoubtedly kept his senior comrades in the Soviet Musicians Union happy, at least for a while. However, he was denounced in 1947 and wasn’t rehabilitated until after his death.

It’s a wonderful piece, emotionally sophisticated and original in voice, even though the voice is not a revolutionary one. The musicians played it for all it was worth. It was beautiful and a real revelation.

And finally the Borodin String Quartet played the Borodin String Quartet no. 2. This is the more familiar of the two, possibly because the tunes for the second and third movements were used for songs in the Broadway play Kismet: Bangles, Baubles and Beads and This is my Beloved respectively. Need I tell you how good the performance was?