St. Petersburg Quartet Impresses at Concert, Master Classes

The St. Petersburg String Quartet spent two days at Groton School last week, giving master classes to student musicians and performing for the entire School.

 

When violinist Melissa Cusanello ’14 introduced the April 10 concert, she explained that, unlike a typical all-School lecture, these “voices” would be heard through musical instruments.

The program was varied, sometimes playful, sometimes profound, sometimes full of overpowering grief and anger (as in Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet). The skilled musicians offered two movements of three string quartets, one each by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Borodin, as well as a movement of a quartet composed in 2011 called "Dreaming Butterfly." They began the concert with an arrangement for string quartet of a piece originally composed for solo violin by J. S. Bach.

 

The virtuoso musicians made students comfortable with amusing stories and casual conversation, but once they started to play, their emotional commitment to the music was apparent, and the audience felt the intensity.

 

Earlier in their visit to Groton, the quartet gave a master class to eight solo string players—three cellists, four violinists, and one violist (see above photo). They also coached the entire Chamber Orchestra.

 

The St. Petersburg String Quartet members are Russian, but are the quartet-in-residence at Wichita State University in Kansas. Alla Aranovskaya, first violin, and Leonid Shukayev, cello, founded the group in 1985; relative newcomers Boris Vayner, violist, and Evgeny Zvonnikov, second violin, joined in 2005 and 2010 respectively.