If the
Hagen Quartett was a band, it would be Metallica. The naked brutality of its attack, the blazing virtuosity of its technique, and the concentrated intensity of its performances are interpretative strategies both ensembles advocate. In any repertoire from
Haydn to
Schubert to
Janácek, the
Hagen is inexorable and unrelenting, but in
Shostakovich it is unbearable and overwhelming. The
Hagen's 1995 recording of the Soviet master's Fourth, Eleventh, and Fourteenth quartets was a coup de maître of musical slash and burn, and this 2006 recording of the Third, Seventh, and Eighth quartets is a chef de oeuvre of sheer terror. Showing compassion only for the hopeless yearning of the Seventh's ghostly waltz and endless grief of the Eighth's shattered finale, the
Hagen mercilessly assaults sonorities, push rhythms recklessly, and force tempos relentlessly, as if
Shostakovich wrote not socialist realist music but the darkest death metal music. Although this approach might not work for every listener -- those for whom only Soviet despair does the trick need not apply -- even the most faithful party apparatchik will have to admit the
Hagen has found a convincing alternative approach to
Shostakovich's music -- pure, unmitigated fury. Deutsche Grammophon's digital sound is vivid, hard, and deep.