String
Quartet No.14 in F# major, op.142
- Allegretto
- Adagio
- Allegretto
This
late quartet is dedicated to the cellist Sergei Shirinsky, and the
cello figures prominently in every movement. Along with much of his
music composed from the op. 135 Fourteenth Symphony onwards, it is
marked by Shostakovich's concerns with death, and fashions his own
personal pain and pessimism into a tour de force. The music moves
freely between diatonic and chromatic passages, the opening
announcing F sharp major though a sustained F sharp on the viola,
against which a straightforward melodic idea is heard on the cello.
The first movement is based on sonata form, but with a free
recapitulation. In the central Adagio textures are extremely spare
until the warmer middle section. When the first part of the movement
returns the music leads into the final Allegretto. More elusive in
form, this movement climaxes in an enigmatic manner with a highly
fragmented texture; first pairs of quavers, then triplet quavers,
then semiquavers. As the music becomes increasingly reflectivein
mood, parts of the Adagio are recalled, before the piece reaches a
serene conclusion that is reminiscent of quieter moments in Dvorák's
quartet writing. Programme notes courtesy of David Beard (Cardiff university)
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