Dmitri Schostakowitsch
Shostakovich cycle

Unyielding witnesses

We are celebrating the Shostakovich Year 2025 with a cycle of all his string quartets. This season kicks off with numbers 1 to 9, in which we encounter the politically troubled composer, sarcastic counter-designs and double dedications as well as - more than once - Lady Macbeth.

Ulrike Thiele

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets. While the symphonies repeatedly attracted the critical eye of the censors, he was able to play more freely in his string quartets - albeit often in secret. While they were initially an opportunity to experiment, they later became sonorous reflections of an inner world that he deliberately concealed from the public.

String Quartet No. 1

With his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" in 1936, Shostakovich had antagonised the ruler Stalin and the party followers. In addition, the newspaper "Pravda" fuelled an existentially threatening campaign against him under the title "Chaos instead of music". Despite a gruelling cat-and-mouse game - close companions of Shostakovich were imprisoned, exiled or even shot - he continued to compose undeterred. He composed his Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5, after which, as he wrote in 1938, he "did nothing for a whole year", "only composing a quartet". It was his first string quartet: "I wrote the first page as a kind of exercise and didn't even think about finishing it or even publishing it ... But the work mesmerised me so much that I finished the rest incredibly quickly." He is critical of his "spring-like" first work, partly because he is aware of the great tradition of the genre. Advocates praise the "clever simplicity", which is reminiscent of Pushkin's poems. The performances in Leningrad and Moscow are a success, also thanks to the performers. He found close companions in the members of the Beethoven Quartet in particular, who would perform almost all of his chamber music works in the future.

String Quartet No. 2

in 1944, Shostakovich was "disturbed" by the "lightning speed" with which he composed: "This is undoubtedly bad." The string quartet is still a kind of experimental field for him. Folklore has a place in the Second Quartet, as does his exploration of stage art based on baroque patterns. Accordingly, in this quartet he titles the first movements operatically as "Overture" and "Recitative and Romance".

String Quartet No. 3

At the end of the Second World War in 1945, nothing less was expected of Shostakovich than a monumental choral symphony to celebrate the victory of the Soviet people and Stalin - especially as it was his 9th symphony. In November 1945, however, he presented a complete alternative to Beethoven's model: a short, cheerful and grotesque symphonic scherzo. The character of this by no means light-footed work is also reflected in String Quartet No. 3 - his only composition of 1946. Above all, the refined melodic and harmonic turns and the rhythmic conciseness speak Shostakovich's unmistakable language.

String Quartets No. 4 and No. 5

in 1948, Shostakovich once again became the focus of Stalinist cultural policy, this time on the grounds that his music significantly embodied "anti-national and formalist tendencies". He headed the "black list" of ostracised artists and was stripped of his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow. As a result, he took a two-pronged approach - on the one hand, he continued to appear in public and read out speeches given to him on political stages; on the other, he closed himself off to social contacts in private. And he composed for the drawer, including the String Quartets No. 4 (1949) and No. 5 (1951). The doctrine of the party leadership and Stalin himself would not have tolerated either the use of Jewish folklore in the fourth or the audible confrontation with Western avant-garde in the fifth. Both quartets were not premiered until after Stalin's death in 1953.

String Quartet No. 6

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 was premiered in December 1953 - to this day one of his most representative works, which caused a sensation in the West in particular. However, the supposed "thaw" in the Soviet Union was rather slow in terms of the composers' association - a process that evidently also took its toll. In his speech at the congress of the composers' association, he found clear words: "Why this spiteful demagoguery, which only inhibits the creative discussion that we need so much!" His own work was also inhibited: After his 10th symphony and the death of his first wife Nina and his mother, the String Quartet No. 6 in 1956 was the first attempt to overcome his creative crisis.

String Quartet No. 7

Shostakovich did not bid farewell to his wife Nina, who died in 1954, musically until a few years later, in 1960, with the String Quartet No. 7, which he explicitly dedicated to her memory. As is so often the case with him, the supposed lightness is deceptive. In the most condensed of his string quartets, he allows the movements to flow into one another attacca, but at the same time establishes recurring and thus meaningful triadic sequences and triple rhythms. The Lento, a veritable centrepiece, aims straight for the heart, but eschews any sentimental touch of kitsch - and is therefore particularly moving. The brash rebellion in the Allegro and Allegretto is in vain; the quartet ends "morendo", simple and yet highly emotional.

String Quartet No. 8

Only a few months later, in the summer of 1960, Shostakovich composed a work of such central importance - both for Shostakovich and for the quartet literature in general - that one could devote entire treatises to this String Quartet No. 8 alone. It begins with the bizarre setting in which it was composed: Shostakovich was in the German Democratic Republic, where he wanted to complete the music for a documentary film about the destruction of Dresden during the Second World War - and under the impression of the eyewitness accounts, composed his 8th String Quartet within three days, dedicated to the victims of war and fascism. However, there is an unofficial double dedication: in a famous letter, he sarcastically describes the work as one "that is of no use to anyone and an idealistic failure". As no one would write a musical memorial for him, he had now done it himself, so that the cover could read: "Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet". In fact, it is imbued with his musical monogram D-Es-C-H, which he had already used in his First Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 10, as well as numerous self-quotes from earlier works such as "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk". The expressive power of this quartet seems almost unrivalled at the moment of experiencing and dying (once again a quartet ends "morendo").

String Quartet No. 9

The triptych of dedication quartets is completed in 1964 by String Quartet No. 9, which Shostakovich dedicated to his third wife, Irina Supinskaya. He commented on this unexpected volte-face in his life musically, so to speak: the C minor Quartet No. 8 was followed by a turn to (E flat) major, the parallel major key. And since Shostakovich often turned out differently than expected, it is hardly surprising that this ninth quartet was conceived as a simple work to be kept small. There is no trace of a second or third spring. It became an almost monumental demonstration of symphonic struggle. This is exemplified by the final movement, which at 10 minutes alone is about as long as the entire Quartet No. 7. It impresses with its intransigence - and thus stands "pars pro toto" for the composer who created it.

Jerusalem Quartet

The Jerusalem Quartet will perform quartets no. 1 to 9 in three concerts, followed by quartets no. 10 to 15 in the 2025/26 season (Sat 29 / Sun 30 Nov 2025).

We use deepL.com for our translations into English.

January 2025
Sun 26. Jan
17.00

Cosmos of chamber music: Shostakovich Cycle

Jerusalem Quartet, Alexander Pavlovsky Violine, Sergei Bresler Violine, Ori Kam Viola, Kyril Zlotnikov Violoncello Schostakowitsch
Sun 26. Jan
11.15

Shostakovich Cycle

Jerusalem Quartet, Alexander Pavlovsky Violine, Sergei Bresler Violine, Ori Kam Viola, Kyril Zlotnikov Violoncello Schostakowitsch
Sat 25. Jan
18.30

Shostakovich Cycle

Jerusalem Quartet, Alexander Pavlovsky Violine, Sergei Bresler Violine, Ori Kam Viola, Kyril Zlotnikov Violoncello Schostakowitsch
published: 21.01.2025

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