3 to 8 October, 2008
VIII D. Shostakovich String Quartet Competition in the Great Hall of the Composer’s House
- Rusquartet
8 Russian and Belgian quartets took part in the competition marathon. Russia was represented by Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory, The Gnesins’ Academy of Music (Moscow), State Ippolitov-Ivanov Music-Pedagogical Institute (Moscow), and N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory (St Petersburg)
Traditionally, the judges’ panel was headed by Valentin Berlinsky (Russia) and included famous musicians and leaders in the genre of quartet music from Israel (Pavel Vernikov), France (Domenic de Viancur), Denmark (Alexander Zapolsky), The Netherlands (Stephen Metz) Austria (Dora Schwartzberg), and Russia (Alexander Galkovsky, Valeriy Vorona, and Alexander Rudin).
The Competition received its international status by the State Order dated 25.2.1987. The first three competitions were held in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and from 1999 they have been held in Moscow.
Permanent chairman of the judges’ panel is Prof. V.A. Berlinsky – the People’s Artist, the winner of the USSR and Russian state awards, Cavalier of the IV Order “For the State Achievements”, Cavalier of the Legion of Honour.
During its 20-year history, the Competition has presented to the music world outstanding music quartets – Lark (USA), Danael and Ardeo (France), Medea (Great Britain), Meta4 (Finland), Phone-quartet (Italy), Lipatti Quartet (Romania), Kazakh State string quartet, and Russian quartets Anton, Eleanor, Dominant, Quinten, Mozart, Romantic, Twins.
RUSQUARTET presented the following compositions in the framework of the Competition:
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“…The First Prize was awarded to RUSQUARTET (Moscow Conservatory). In the second round the all female quartet performed Bartok’s 4th string quartet and Borodin’s 1st quartet. Bartok’s 4th is a very complex a rarely performed piece. So much so, that its notes are hard to find in Russia. However, there are excellent recordings of the quartet. RUSQUARTET deserves the highest praise for its superb performance. No less wonderful was their performance of the great Borodin’s 1st. As its final piece, RUSQUARTET performed one of my favorites – Shostakovich’s 3rd string quartet. It is quite long – almost 40 minutes, but it was so convincingly played by RUSQUARTET that it became clear – they deserve the first prize. Congratulations to RUSQUARTET for well-deserved victory.
The members have been playing in a string quartet for the past 10 years, are experienced performers at international competitions, as well as international concert halls, are active participants in international master classes, and in general are part of the mainstream, but most importantly, they are excellent musicians.”
