The first volume in the Cuarteto Casals’ survey of Shostakovich’s 15 numbered string quartets takes in the works composed between 1938 and 1952. Even the biggest Shostakovich fan would not claim that all of those first five scores are among the finest in the series, though two of them, the Third and the Fifth, composed in 1946 and 1952 respectively, are substantial works in which Shostakovich began to explore the limits of what the medium could offer him.

In its way, 1938’s First Quartet is as much a “reply to just criticism” as the much better known Fifth Symphony, completed the previous year; its four movements stick closely to the classical model, in a language that is almost blandly diatonic. Though conceived on a more expansive scale, the Second, composed towards the end of the second world war, is similarly unadventurous. But the Third is a different matter altogether, a five-movement work of far greater emotional depth and scope, which inescapably reflects Shostakovich’s experience of the war just ended.

All of the Cuarteto Casals’ performances are wonderfully refined, but it’s clear that they respond more vividly to the greater expressive demands of the Third and Fifth, where their playing has much more bite and intensity than it does in the other works. Though bigger challenges will come later in the cycle, this opening instalment is a very promising one.

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