Shostakovich and the String Quartet
by Alan George
Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was born on 25th September 1906, in St. Petersburg. His earliest musical experiences were at home, with his mother playing the piano (having once been a student at the conservatoire herself) and his father a fine amateur singer. Although two of their neighbours sometimes joined them to play trios chamber music did not feature strongly in their soirées. However, the cellist did sometimes host his own get-togethers: Shostakovich recalled, “He often played quartets and trios by Mozart, Beethoven, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky; I used to go out into the corridor and sit there for hours, the better to hear the music.” Even so, his parents’ music making, visits to the opera, and his own piano lessons, were all of greater initial importance; indeed, his mother was his first teacher – although she quickly recognised her inadequacies with respect to this gifted pupil, and arranged for him to be taught at Ignati Glyasser’s celebrated music school. Less than two years later, aged ten, he had already started to write his own music. So it seemed natural that when he enrolled at the (by then, Petrograd) Conservatoire in 1919 he should study both piano and composition: at the tender age of thirteen he could hardly have been aware which direction his career would ultimately take. Maybe in those days he had fanciful dreams of the glittering life of a virtuoso concert pianist; but when he left the conservatoire in 1925 he immediately achieved worldwide fame as a composer – with his graduation piece, the First Symphony. Yet two years later he was awarded a Diploma of Honour in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw – in effect a consolation prize: he had actually been one of the favourites to win, but ill-health and family troubles had hindered his preparation. His solo career continued for many more years, and it is not surprising to learn that as a student he had been much more inclined to work at this repertoire than to become involved in regular ensemble playing. Understandably the composing of chamber music held little more interest for him than the playing of it, and he did not turn his attention to this area in earnest until well into his thirties.
By the time he came to write his first string quartet he had otherwise produced no more in this milieu than a piano trio (a student work, only made available a few years ago), three pieces for cello and piano (subsequently lost), two pieces each for string octet and string quartet, and a sonata for cello and piano; so at least there would appear to have been no deliberate avoidance of chamber music. During his early manhood he was greatly affected by a whole amalgam of Art and History, both political and personal – not the least of which was his own native musical heritage. Russia had always lacked a strong quartet tradition: her greatest nineteenth century quartets were undoubtedly by Borodin and Tchaikovsky – a grand total of five and a quarter! – but those of the former were frowned upon by his Nationalist colleagues in Moguchaya Kuchka (“The Five”), while Pyotr Ilyich reputedly listed chamber compositions with strings among his most hated instrumental combinations! An amateur enthusiasm proliferated – typified by the Friday quartet meetings at the home of Belaiev, and his subsequent publication of various short pieces in two volumes: appropriately entitled Les Vendredis. However, it has to be said that the great Russian composers were temperamentally more suited to the scale and dramatic scope of opera and symphony. Before long, however, Shostakovich was singlehandedly changing one particular course of Russian musical history, in that scores of Soviet composers have since turned out scores of quartets, the majority clearly demonstrating their debt and influence. But even at the time of his death – 50 years ago next August! – the widespread championing of Shostakovich’s quartets in his native land had only sporadically been reflected in the West, where most groups seemed oddly reluctant to admit them (apart from No.8) into the hallowed and exclusive company of the Standard Quartet Repertoire. Fortunately that has indeed changed, as the critical and popular response to this music grows ever more vociferous, such that many distinguished British ensembles have now followed the Fitzwilliam and the Brodsky in promoting them with real commitment. Not all academic ivory towers yet acknowledge fully the extent of Shostakovich’s achievement; but until recently they have been hampered by the lack of a truly comprehensive bibliography – although a number of important new publications have appeared in the past generation or so.
Inevitably the symphonies are always likely to be more generally familiar than the quartets; and a side-by-side comparison of the two series will not necessarily lead to a greater understanding of the latter, except to demonstrate the composer’s gradual shift of emphasis from one genre to the other: after the end of the war he composed six symphonies and thirteen quartets, whereas up to that time he had to his credit nine symphonies and only two quartets. The obvious temptation to treat the two series as representing respectively the public and private sides of his artistic nature was something the composer himself opposed passionately. In any case, such a division is really only surface deep, as can be seen by their reciprocal influence: the earlier quartets tend to be symphonic in conception, with the last symphonies becoming more rarefied and inward. Yet the dedications on the quartets’ scores do testify to an intimacy very much in tune with the true spirit of chamber music: the inscribed names are all close personal acquaintances, and include two of his wives as well as members of the Beethoven Quartet (the ensemble who premièred all but the first and last). Another fascinating comparison with the symphonies reveals a preponderance of major keys: the ratio is 10:5, whereas with the symphonies it is the reverse. Significantly, it was not until the seventh that he chose a minor key for a quartet; however, had he lived longer this situation would have been rectified, since in the early sixties he had hit upon the idea of writing a quartet in each of the 24 keys – a clearly ordered scheme can be traced from No.8 onwards.
Having established that there is no full length “early” quartet by Shostakovich, it is both possible and desirable to divide the series into two groups, corresponding with the familiar “middle” and “late” periods of such composers as Beethoven and Mahler. The division is by no means an equal one, neither is it particularly clear cut. But the last four quartets do seem to belong so inexorably to each other – presenting four entirely contrasting aspects of something common to them all – that they must be seen somewhat apart from the rest. That “something” relates to an obsession with human mortality, expressed in a language at once sparer and more concise, profoundly coloured by a new interest in the possibilities inherent in twelve-note rows. The first eleven quartets inevitably represent a more varied experience, heard from within the confines of a particularly individual and consistent musical voice. Generally they tend to be more outward looking in spirit; and although they are hardly without their moments of sadness and melancholy they can often be robust and even light hearted. At the root of all this is a basic allegiance to the principles of Classical form and structure, allied to a never-failing grasp of what constitutes truly idiomatic quartet writing. It should be noted that, unlike Beethoven and Bartók, Shostakovich never really sought to strain the medium beyond its already existing limits: indeed, he accepted it for what it was, gradually refining and sublimating it. In this respect he can hardly be considered to have expanded the technique of the string quartet, though whether or not he increased its expressive range is an entirely different matter.
“A lyrical confession of my father” – thus did Maxim Shostakovich describe the fifteen string quartets, just six years after the composer’s death in 1975. At that time their full significance was still only gradually being understood; yet the untiring work of a small number of pioneering ensembles has, in the intervening years, established the Shostakovich quartets as among the greatest ever written, and arguably – along with those of Bartók – the most important cycle of chamber music since Beethoven. Indeed, the word cycle is here more apt than usual, in that by No.9 Shostakovich himself had conceived the idea of a cycle of quartets in all 24 keys. That a further nine remained unwritten is one of the major tragic consequences of the prolonged illness which so dominated the last decade of his life – and which also affected the later quartets in so profound and disturbing a manner.
At the forefront of Shostakovich interpretation in the West, during the last few years of his life, was the Fitzwilliam String Quartet – indeed, it was through their association with this composer that they first became well-known: beginning with the British première of the thirteenth, for which Shostakovich himself made a special journey to Yorkshire in November 1972, they were subsequently entrusted by him with the first Western performances of Nos.14 and 15 as well. They became the first ever group to record and perform all fifteen – complete cycles have been given in a number of major centres, including London, Montréal, and New York – and their LP of Nos.4 and 12 was the very first winner in the chamber music category of the highly sought-after Gramophone Awards: the complete set is now available in CD format in various Decca boxed sets – most recently as part of the FSQ’s entire Decca discography (complete with the original LP sleeves!); it is even listed in Gramophone magazine’s Hundred Greatest-ever Recordings. The last three quartets were re-recorded by Linn to celebrate the group’s 50th anniversary in 2018.
Contact with his “young English friends” was maintained through regular correspondence, and arrangements had been finalised for them to spend a week with him in Moscow in September 1975. Although his death on August 9th cut short those plans, they were subsequently invited to perform his music in many Soviet concert halls, including his own favourite, the Glinka Hall in Leningrad – which city (under its restored name of St Petersburg) they have since visited visit regularly, including a concert in the Conservatoire as part of the composer’s centenary celebrations.
At the close of the century to whose musical heritage Shostakovich made such a major contribution, it was appropriate that the Fitzwilliam should mark the 25th anniversary of his death (in the year 2000 itself) by revisiting his extraordinary world with a renewed concentration; and in 2006 (the centenary of his birth) it felt absolutely incumbent on the FSQ to lead the way via increased promotion of his great legacy of quartets, those deepest of my father’s thoughts, the expression of his most philosophical conceptions.
© Alan George
