The follow-up to Olympia’s first volume of Tishchenko quartets (see 7/96) once again shows the rewards and limitations of following in the footsteps of Shostakovich. The natural obsessiveness of his teacher’s manner informs every stage of the Third Quartet, dedicated to his fellow-pupil Ustvolskaya, but without the master’s terseness of structure. Most immediately impressive is the robusto third movement, whose neo-barbarism is as reminiscent of Bartok’s Third as it is of Shostakovich. There are striking things too in the oppressed, vaguely archaic first movement and the tense silences and brittle outbursts of the second. But the opening soliloquy (something of a Tishchenko mannerism) seems over-long and the first movement boils over in a slightly scummy way. The chastened drifting of the finale is plausible as a general manner, but its specific direction fails to convince.
The Fifth Quartet (1984) is more consistent in its mastery, I think. A faux-naif Dvorakian opening soon comes apart at the seams, and the middle of the movement takes up a haunted Shostakovichian tapping repeated-note figure, working up sufficient violence to make the eventual reprise a torrid affair. There is an effective witty-uneasy pay-off. The central movement is a paradoxical allegro dolce, like a sad waltz of ghosts revisiting life. The stalking, watchful character is again inherited from Shostakovich (whose Fifteenth Symphony finale appears to hover in the background). The finale promises to throw off the preceding lethargy, only to become assaulted by a march and to fall back to a traumatized, eerie coda.
Ultimately these son-of-Shostakovich quartets may have difficulty breaking through into the repertoire; but they never sound stale or insincere, and I find myself returning to Nos. 4 and 5 with increasing appreciation. As before the performances are intensely communicative, slightly wiry and closely but clearly recorded, with a number of audible edits.'