Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Recorded on 01/22/2014, uploaded on 07/09/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets are seen by many as one of his crowning achievements. Curiously enough, he did not show much interest in writing for string quartet during the early years of his career. It was only after his Fifth Symphony that he wrote his first Quartet, Op. 49, in 1936. It was not until seven years later that he wrote a second. After this slow start, the quartet grew in importance in his musical output, and became the vehicle for expressing his private thoughts, as it had for Beethoven. It is to Beethoven’s quartets, both spiritually and technically, that these works pay homage and like Beethoven, Shostakovich allows his choice of musical material to determine the overall shape of the piece.

Between 1948 and 1953, Shostakovich turned increasingly to the composition of film scores. The Fifth Quartet was written during this period, in the autumn of 1952, and, like some of his most significant works of the early fifties — the First Violin Concerto, the Tenth Symphony, and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry — the Fifth Quartet was not performed until after Stalin’s death. The work was premiered by the renowned Beethoven Quartet (to whom it was dedicated) in the Maly Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on Nov. 13, 1953.

The Fifth Quartet is an introspective work fashioned in three large movements played without pause. The opening of the work contains Shostakovich’s musical signature DSCH (D, E-flat, C, B, in German nomenclature) which appears in many of his works. The piece embraces a wide emotional range: from anger, irony, and passion, to lyricism and contemplative solitude.      Notes adapted by Joseph Way

The Formosa Quartet
Jasmine Lin, Violin
Wayne Lee, Violin
Che-Yen Chen, Viola
Dmitry Kouzov, Cello (guest cellist)

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.