Grechaninov's songs and liturgical music have earned him a minor place in the repertory; his orchestral music has more or less vanished without trace, and there are few string quartets who have shown much interest in his four works in the medium. No. 1 was issued last year by the Shostakovich Quartet (Olympia, 6/93); here now are two of the remaining three. They are basically in similar vein, whatever the more superficial differences. No. 2, of 1913, is quite fresh and lively, with a Largo that has the atmosphere of a composer settling happily into the manner in which he is most content, in this case song. The more ambitious chromatics that overcome this movement after a slow central fugue seem less convincing; and, again, in the Fourth Quartet of 1929, Grechaninov's post-Revolution awareness of newer trends does not lead to their convincing assimilation. This is not to say that he is pursuing bandwaggons in the hope of leaping aboard. His idiom was gentle, unassuming, grounded on the kind of Russian lyricism which found a genius in Tchaikovsky, and there is something rather touching about his interest in seeing how much can be absorbed into this without distorting it. He lacks constructive strength, and the attempt to remedy this in No. 4 with the pervasive use of a figure like an inversion of the main theme of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony does not really carry sustained musical conviction.
This may all sound like damning with faint praise, or possibly praising with faint damns: those who enjoy music that continues on its contented romantic way through the storms of the twentieth century and survives by virtue of a kind of innocence will perhaps not feel minded to be this critical. The performances are affectionate and persuasive.'