PERFORMANCE

Merkin Hall
What Makes It Great?

Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8

The Attacca String Quartet was wonderful.  The violist is from Texas!

The string quartet, Attacca, that performed the Shostakovich...

Attacca playing Haydn...

The meaning of Shostakovich’s greatest chamber work, an emotionally wrenching piece he called his “ideologically depraved quartet,” has been contested for more than 50 years. Written in just three days in a white-hot burst of inspiration after visiting the bombed-out portions of Dresden, the quartet was officially dedicated to the victims of fascism and war. But did Shostakovich actually intend it as veiled criticism of Soviet rule meant to undermine the Communist regime? Or as a requiem for himself, a powerful testament to his own uniquely personal experience?

"The piece was written shortly after two traumatic events in the life of the composer: the first presentation of debilitating muscular weakness that would eventually be diagnosed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,[1] and his reluctant joining of the Communist Party. According to the score, it is dedicated "to the victims of fascism and the war"; his son, Maxim, interprets this as a reference to the victims of all totalitarianism, while his daughter Galina says that he dedicated it to himself, and that the published dedication was imposed by the Russian authorities. Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsky, said that Shostakovich thought of the work as his epitaph and that he planned to commit suicide around this time.[2]

The work was written in Dresden, where Shostakovich was to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint project by Soviet and East German film-makers about the bombing of Dresden in World War II.

The quartet was premiered in 1960 in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet. In the liner notes of the Borodin String Quartet's recording of the quartet in 1962, critic Erik Smith wrote: The Borodin Quartet played this work to the composer at his Moscow home, hoping for his criticisms. But Shostakovich, overwhelmed by this beautiful realisation of his most personal feelings, buried his head in his hands and wept. When they had finished playing, the four musicians quietly packed up their instruments and stole out of the room."