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Dmitry Shostakovich
tells us that he conceived his First StringQuartet as a ‘spring
exercise’, ‘bright, cheerful and lyrical’, a ‘ludic interlude after the Fifth Symphony’.
It is one of the few works by Shostakovich containing no depiction of anguish,
desolation and revolt. It was premièred in Leningrad by the Glazunov Quartet,
then in Moscow by the Beethoven Quartet, whose young members were soon to
count among the composer’s close friends.
Dmitry Tsïganov (first violin) relates: ‘
After the success of the First Quartet, we asked
Shostakovich to compose a Piano Quintet. We were overjoyed at his reply: “Very well, I
shall write a quintet, and of course I will play with you…”. That was in 1939 and the first
performance was given the following year (23 November, in the small auditorium of the
Moscow Conservatory). It was a triumph.’
The work was even awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941, thus marking Shostakovich’s
(momentary) return to favour after his terrible blacklisting in 1936, following the
scandal of
Lady Macbeth
. The composer gave numerous performances of this
composition with the Beethoven Quartet, and it was the last work he performed
publicly as a pianist in the 1960s.
SHOSTAKOVICH