A student of Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) and Nikolai Rubinstein (1835–1881), Taneyev’s academic credentials were impeccable. In that regard, he would become a master of counterpoint, and publish a highly regarded treatise on the subject. So it’s not surprising that discipline informs his works.

Granted he wasn’t the tunesmith some of his Russian contemporaries were, but his music has an organizational integrity second to none. Consequently his creations reflect Beethoven’s (1770–1827) preoccupation with structural perfection rather than Schubert’s (1797–1828) predilection for melody. His string quartets are certainly a good starting point for those interested in exploring some of the least known, but most sophisticated Russian romantic chamber music ever written.

The four-movement second quartet (fifth, composed in 1894–95) opens with an allegro of such taut construction that it brings Beethoven’s late quartets to mind. Yet, despite its dispassionate structural rigor, there are some lovely melodic ideas with Slavic overtones.

The tension builds in the following scherzo, whose agitated outer sections seem loosely based on the Dies Irae, which would later became a preoccupation with his student Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943). They surround a delicate tuneful trio section, which anticipates the subdued mood of the coming adagio. This is based on an extended, chromatically stretched melody that despite a couple of angst-ridden episodes, achieves moments of great lyric beauty.

The frolicsome finale is a contrapuntal, modulatory playground where charming childlike ideas chase one another. Taneyev must have had a smile on his face when he composed this, particularly after penning a closing raspberry on the cello [track-4, beginning at 07:39] and final “so there” ending.

Written in solitude while visiting a monastery, the fourth quartet (seventh, composed in 1898–99) is his most emotionally fraught. It begins with a pathos-filled motif (PF) that will be the blastema from which the entire quartet will grow. The first of its four movements might best be described as a sonata-rhapsody with frequent allusions to PF. This is some of Sergey’s most progressive music.

The divermore....

Review By Byzantion ,MusicWeb International,April 2011

This is volume 2 of Naxos’s edition of Russian composer Sergey Taneyev’s complete (9) string quartets—volume 1, released in 2007, was reviewed here and here.

String quartets form an important part of Taneyev’s output, though their numbering is problematic. Only two movements of the first quartet were finished, then three complete works followed, before the ‘official’ no.1 was published as Taneyev’s op.4. After that, more came, thick and fast, including the two on this disc. No.6 was the last to receive an opus number (19), completed in 1905, after which Taneyev concentrated on other traditional chamber forms, until in 1911 he wrote a final string quartet, only to break off again after two movements.

In his article on the composer in the New Grove Dictionary, David Brown writes that Taneyev “was the antithesis of Glinka, for whereas the latter was possessed of a powerful and vivid imagination but was deficient in technique, Taneyev had little imaginative endowment but commanded a compositional skill unsurpassed by any Russian composer of his period.” Anyone listening to these two quartets is sure to agree with the latter notion immediately, but will equally be disinclined to accept the first sentiment, because this is music that positively bristles not just with technical expertise—they have the same undeniable air of perfect craftsmanship about them as the middle quartets of Beethoven—but with real imagination. Taneyev was a true intellectual—he counted Tolstoy and Rimsky-Korsakov among his closest friends, and was an ascetic—a rare Russian teetotaller!; but in these quartets there is much more than dry academicism or musical sobriety.

Following three movements of music that is by turn impassioned, intimate and lyrical, the allegro vigoroso finale of the Second Quartet abounds in unexpected virtuosity, with chromaticism layered masterfully upon modulation upon counterpoint upon harmonic twist and turn, all heading towards a delicious ending. The Fourth Quartet is a more soul-searching, dramatic work—more akin now to Beethoven’s late works, which are not in any way debased by comparison. To suggest that the composer of this quartet has “little imaginative endowment” is absurd—this is a profound work, from the chromatic intensity of the first movement, through the jerky elegance of the divertimento, the wistful heartache of the adagio, to the dark-roasted, surprisingly upbeat finale.

The genre-crossing tendencies of the Carpe Diem Quartet might not be to everyone’s liking, but there is little to fault in their musical taste or general musicianship on this disc. The sound quality is excellent, if slightly thick, the liner-notes fairly brief but more....