Tickets are on sale for an amazing weekend of the complete Shostakovich quartets at the
Cheltenham Music Festival - 27-28th June! Box office: 0844 880 8094
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Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Thursday, 26 February 2015
Shostakovich CD makes the top 10!
'polished and passionate' The Sunday Times
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Timeline
1906 – Birth of Shostakovich on
September 25th, St.Petersburg
1914-1918 – World War 1
1924 – Death of Lenin
1926 – Symphony No.1 premiered to great acclaim
1929 – Stalin becomes leader of the USSR
1932 – Shostakovich marries Nina Varzar
1936 – Birth of daughter, Galina
1936 – Pravda attacks Opera, Lady Macbeth as 'chaos instead of music'
1937 – Stalin's year of terror
1938 – String Quartet No.1 (aged 31)
1938 – Birth of son, Maxim
1939-1945 – World War 2
1940 - Receives Stalin Prize for Piano Quintet
1944 – String Quartet No.2 (aged 38)
1946 – Churchill declares 'an Iron curtain has descended across the continent'
1946 – String Quartet No.3 (aged 40)
1948 - Zhdanov Decree - Dismissed from his posts at Moscow and Leningrad.
1949 - The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb
1949 – String Quartet No.4 (aged 43)
1952 – String Quartet No.5 (aged 46)
1953 – Death of Stalin
1954 – Death of Nina Varzar
1956 – Shostakovich meets and marries his second wife Margarita Kainova
1956 – String Quartet No.6 (aged 49)
1956 – Hungarian uprising
1959 – Divorces Margarita Kainova
1960 – String Quartet No.7 (aged 53)
1960 – Shostakovich joins the Communist party
1960 – String Quartet No.8 (aged 53)
1961 – Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space
1962 – Cuban missile crisis
1962 – Marries his third wife, Irina Antonia Supinskiya
1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the USSR
1964 – String Quartet No.9 (aged 57)
1964 – String Quartet No.10
1965 – Death of Vasili Shirinsky, second violinst of the Beethoven Quartet
1966 – String Quartet No.11 (aged 59)
1966 – Shostakovich suffers his first heart attack
1968 – String Quartet No.12 (aged 61)
1968 – Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
1970 – String Quartet No.13 (aged 63)
1971 – Shostakovich suffers his second heart attack
1972 – Death of Vadim Borisovsky, original violist of the Beethoven Quartet
1972 – Undergoes radiation treatment for lung cancer
1973 – String Quartet No.14 (aged 66)
1973 – Shostakovich's name appears on a document in Pravda denouncing Sakharov
1974 – String Quartet No.15 (aged 67)
1974 – Death of Sergei Shirinsky following a rehearsal of Quartet No.15
1974 – Taneyev Quartet give the premiere of Quartet No.15
1975 – Death of Shostakovich on August 9th, Moscow
1914-1918 – World War 1
1924 – Death of Lenin
1926 – Symphony No.1 premiered to great acclaim
1929 – Stalin becomes leader of the USSR
1932 – Shostakovich marries Nina Varzar
 |
| Shostakovich with Nina and Ivan Sollertinsky |
1936 – Birth of daughter, Galina
1936 – Pravda attacks Opera, Lady Macbeth as 'chaos instead of music'
1937 – Stalin's year of terror
1938 – String Quartet No.1 (aged 31)
1938 – Birth of son, Maxim
1939-1945 – World War 2
1940 - Receives Stalin Prize for Piano Quintet
 |
| With the Glazunov Quartet in 1940 |
1944 – String Quartet No.2 (aged 38)
1946 – Churchill declares 'an Iron curtain has descended across the continent'
1946 – String Quartet No.3 (aged 40)
1948 - Zhdanov Decree - Dismissed from his posts at Moscow and Leningrad.
1949 - The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb
1949 – String Quartet No.4 (aged 43)
 |
| In 1949 |
1952 – String Quartet No.5 (aged 46)
1953 – Death of Stalin
1954 – Death of Nina Varzar
1956 – Shostakovich meets and marries his second wife Margarita Kainova
1956 – String Quartet No.6 (aged 49)
1956 – Hungarian uprising
1959 – Divorces Margarita Kainova
1960 – String Quartet No.7 (aged 53)
1960 – Shostakovich joins the Communist party
1960 – String Quartet No.8 (aged 53)
1961 – Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space
 |
| With Kabalevsky and Gagarin |
1962 – Cuban missile crisis
1962 – Marries his third wife, Irina Antonia Supinskiya
1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the USSR
1964 – String Quartet No.9 (aged 57)
1964 – String Quartet No.10
1965 – Death of Vasili Shirinsky, second violinst of the Beethoven Quartet
1966 – String Quartet No.11 (aged 59)
 |
| with Britten in 1966 |
1966 – Shostakovich suffers his first heart attack
1968 – String Quartet No.12 (aged 61)
1968 – Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
1970 – String Quartet No.13 (aged 63)
1971 – Shostakovich suffers his second heart attack
1972 – Death of Vadim Borisovsky, original violist of the Beethoven Quartet
1972 – Undergoes radiation treatment for lung cancer
1973 – String Quartet No.14 (aged 66)
1973 – Shostakovich's name appears on a document in Pravda denouncing Sakharov
1974 – String Quartet No.15 (aged 67)
1974 – Death of Sergei Shirinsky following a rehearsal of Quartet No.15
1974 – Taneyev Quartet give the premiere of Quartet No.15
1975 – Death of Shostakovich on August 9th, Moscow
Friday, 30 January 2015
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Shostakovich 15 begins!
We're excited to be launching our year of Shostakovich! Complete cycles will include at the Globe - London, the Phillips Collection - Washington DC, Cheltenham Festival, Oxford, Aldeburgh, Cardiff, Colombia, and *breaking news* - we will also perform the complete cycle at the Curtis Auditorium of the Cork School of Music in Ireland. All concerts will be listed on our blog here!
This January, a number of our concerts will feature Shostakovich's quartet no.12. Here are some of our thoughts about this work:
Shostakovich's quartet no.12 (1968) is sometimes described as the 'musicologist's favourite', which is probably because he introduces a fascinating new palette of colours into the work. The opening cello statement is a twelve-tone note-row, (a clear nod towards the serial techniques developed by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg). However, Shostakovich uses the key signature Db major, (serial works don't have key signatures!), so it becomes clear that he is not working within the rules of the more mathematically developed serial structures, but using twelve-tone material in a more traditional way, which pushes the work into a starker and unsettling sound world.
This January, a number of our concerts will feature Shostakovich's quartet no.12. Here are some of our thoughts about this work:
Shostakovich's quartet no.12 (1968) is sometimes described as the 'musicologist's favourite', which is probably because he introduces a fascinating new palette of colours into the work. The opening cello statement is a twelve-tone note-row, (a clear nod towards the serial techniques developed by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg). However, Shostakovich uses the key signature Db major, (serial works don't have key signatures!), so it becomes clear that he is not working within the rules of the more mathematically developed serial structures, but using twelve-tone material in a more traditional way, which pushes the work into a starker and unsettling sound world.
When Tsiganov, the leader of the Beethoven quartet questioned his use of the twelve-tone music, Shostakovich implied that it was nothing new, saying 'but one finds examples of it in Mozart's music'. There is probably some irony in Shostakovich's words, but we immediately thought of the opening of Mozart's 'Dissonance' quartet, where he introduces one by one, 11 of the 12 semitones, almost like a tone-row. And of course there was Zhdanov's decree that music should be 'melodious and graceful' - twelve-tone melodies were surely not what he had in mind!
One interesting feature of the first movement is that the 2nd violin is silent until it's entry in the 34th bar. This seems to be a homage to the original 2nd violinist of the Beethoven quartet who had died in 1965, (the 34th year of the quartet's career).**
This quartet is dedicated to Tsiganov the 1st violinist of the Beethoven quartet and the next two quartets, 13 and 14 are dedicated to the violist and cellist.
The 2nd movement is a monumental structure that treats the twelve-tone theme in an almost symphonic way, dramatically changing characters, mood, tempi and tone colours and the work ends in a rather triumphant and very conclusive fashion - one of the only quartets to do this. You can really feel a sense of anticipation and build-up, like the finales of some of Beethoven's works.
**As well as this, the work is also the only one that shares an opus number with a Beethoven quartet - op.133, his 'Grosse Fuge. Plus, is it just a coincidence that the 12th quartet introduces use of 'twelve-tone' music!?
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Shakespeare's Globe - London - 9th August 2015
The venue is the wonderful Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe in London (pictured here).
We hope you'll join us on our epic journey! Tickets now on sale!
Concert 1 - 11:00-12:55 (inc. interval)
Quartet No. 1 in C major, Op.49
Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op.68
Quartet No. 3 in F major, Op.73
Quartet No. 4 in D major, Op.83
Concert 2 - 14:00-15:40 (inc. interval)
Quartet No. 5 in B flat major, Op.92
Quartet No. 6 in G major, Op.101
Quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor, Op.108
Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op.110
Concert 3 - 17:00-18:55 (inc. interval)
Quartet No. 9 in E flat major, Op.117
Quartet No. 10 in A flat major, Op.118
Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op.122
Quartet No. 12 in D flat major, Op.133
Concert 4 - 20:00-21:20 (inc. interval)
Quartet No. 13 in B flat minor, Op.138
Quartet No. 14 in F sharp major, Op.142
Quartet No. 15 in E flat minor, Op.144
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Tuesday, 4 November 2014
Quartet no.1
As we set off on tour to Germany and Holland (where our programmes will include Shostakovich's 1st quartet), we wanted to note down some of our thoughts about the work which will of course kick-off next year's complete cycles.
It was composed in the summer of 1938 when Shostakovich was 32. (Perhaps not as young as you'd expect for his first quartet!). It is often described as a 'spring-like' work and he said "I visualized childhood scenes, somewhat naïve and bright moods associated with spring."
It seems to us that this work is in many ways a new beginning for Shostakovich. In 1936 he fell out of official favour when Stalin attended a performance of his opera Lady Macbeth. The series of critical attacks that followed in Pravda led to a drop in Shostakovich's income by three quarters and he must have at times also feared for his own safety. The 1st quartet certainly seems to demonstrate a new kind of Russian neoclassicism which he perhaps hoped would help to rehabilitate himself in Soviet eyes.
The 1st movement opens with a feeling of calm benevolence and leads us via a flowing melody to a 2nd theme which is quirky and waltz-like. We can't escape the feeling though that behind the music there is still a sense of fear. This feeling also pervades the 2nd movement, which on the surface sounds like a simple folk-inspired melody. (It reminds us a little of the melancholy in Mendelssohn's op.13 Intermezzo). The 3rd movement is brighter, although skittish and nervous, with a wonderfully Viennese sounding trio section (rather like some of the music in Hugo Wolf's Italian serenade). The last movement full of energy and vigour is certainly in a 'spring-like' mood, with a virtuoso violin part and exhilarating ending which is great fun to play! Interesting that Shostakovich originally intended this to be the 1st movement, however the current 1st movement would have then been the finale, fading away with a sense of melancholy and fear. The work as a whole would have felt much less 'spring-like' and presumably therefore the Soviet authorities would have looked on it less favourably as a result...
It was composed in the summer of 1938 when Shostakovich was 32. (Perhaps not as young as you'd expect for his first quartet!). It is often described as a 'spring-like' work and he said "I visualized childhood scenes, somewhat naïve and bright moods associated with spring."
It seems to us that this work is in many ways a new beginning for Shostakovich. In 1936 he fell out of official favour when Stalin attended a performance of his opera Lady Macbeth. The series of critical attacks that followed in Pravda led to a drop in Shostakovich's income by three quarters and he must have at times also feared for his own safety. The 1st quartet certainly seems to demonstrate a new kind of Russian neoclassicism which he perhaps hoped would help to rehabilitate himself in Soviet eyes.
The 1st movement opens with a feeling of calm benevolence and leads us via a flowing melody to a 2nd theme which is quirky and waltz-like. We can't escape the feeling though that behind the music there is still a sense of fear. This feeling also pervades the 2nd movement, which on the surface sounds like a simple folk-inspired melody. (It reminds us a little of the melancholy in Mendelssohn's op.13 Intermezzo). The 3rd movement is brighter, although skittish and nervous, with a wonderfully Viennese sounding trio section (rather like some of the music in Hugo Wolf's Italian serenade). The last movement full of energy and vigour is certainly in a 'spring-like' mood, with a virtuoso violin part and exhilarating ending which is great fun to play! Interesting that Shostakovich originally intended this to be the 1st movement, however the current 1st movement would have then been the finale, fading away with a sense of melancholy and fear. The work as a whole would have felt much less 'spring-like' and presumably therefore the Soviet authorities would have looked on it less favourably as a result...
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