Shostakovich soars in Musical Masterworks' masterful hands

You think you know a piece of music. Shostakovich's Piano Quintet in g minor, for example. In fact, it's one of your favorites.

And you know you're about to hear it performed on Saturday night, so you pull out your disc with the Borodin Trio (plus two) and listen. And, yes, it is a powerful piece. And — let's face it — the Borodins are no slouches.

But then you find yourself sitting in a pew in the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, the hair standing up on the back of your neck as Edward Aaron, the artistic director of Musical Masterworks, on cello, is joined by Rieko Aizawa on piano, Danielle Farina on viola and Catherine Cho and Kyung Sun Lee on violins, in a performance that grabs you by the lapels and shakes you.

For this reviewer, this was the high point of the evening, but that didn't mean there weren't several other wonderful moments.

For starters, Aizawa performed Mozart's Rondo in D Major, K. 485, and it was alive in her hands, brilliant, happy and seductive. Indeed, this reviewer would have been content to listen to Aizawa play Mozart for the rest of the evening.

Then Aaron introduced three rarely performed pieces by Shostakovich: Three Duets for Two Violins with Piano composed in 1955.

"This is not," Aaron said, "the Shostakovich that you know."

Indeed. The three pieces consisted of a prelude, a sad, very "Russian" melody and then a gavotte that was just that: a bouncy, cheerful tune that could have come right out of the 18th century. Lastly, there was a waltz, sounding more Viennese than Russian.

And then ... the piano quintet, composed in 1941, and introduced by Aaron as "serious business."

"You can hear the personal pain of Shostakovich," Aaron said, pointing to the second movement, a slow fugue, which he described as being like "the frozen tundra," and to the scherzo, which he described as "very sarcastic and almost demonic." And then, as if by magic, the finale, which "drifts off in three G Major chords and a smile on its face."

The group plunged in, giving a performance in which they held nothing back, drawing out each nuance of the piece until it was almost unbearably intense.

After a short intermission, the group returned to perform Ernst von Dohnányi's Piano Quintet in c minor, Opus 1, the work of an extremely talented, deeply romantic 18-year-old Hungarian composer.

It is, Aaron said, "perhaps the most romantic piece ever, which is why we're playing it on the eve of Valentine's Day."

Dohnányi was a favorite of Brahms, Aaron said, who reportedly said of the quintet, "I couldn't have written it better myself."

And the group's performance of the piece was impeccable, a great wallowing in melody upon melody, a piece that, in contrast to Shostakovich's storm clouds, was endless sun.

k.robinson@theday.com