Shostakovich: String Quartet No.1 in C major, Op.49 (1938)
Moderato
Moderato
Allegro molto
Allegro
“I’ve finished…….the quartet……. I played the beginning for you. It got changed around during composition: the first movement is now the last, and vice versa. There are four movements altogether. It didn’t come out dead right; but then, it’s hard to compose well. It takes skill.” Thus wrote Shostakovich in a get-well letter to his close friend Ivan Sollertinsky, in the summer of 1938. Later he recalls, “I began to write it without any particular idea or feeling in mind, and thought nothing would come of it. The quartet is one of the hardest musical mediums. I wrote the first page as a sort of exercise in quartet form, without any thought of completing it. But then the piece took hold of me and I completed it very quickly. One shouldn’t look for any great depth in this first quartet. I’d call it a ‘springtime’ work.”
It is hardly necessary to rehearse yet again the circumstances which befell Shostakovich during the years 1936-7 (concerning the banning of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtzensk District); but having completed his professional and psychological convalescence with the fifth symphony, plus its attendant success and publicity, he obviously needed a period of recuperation. Sensibly he attempted very little during 1938, and so the state of mind revealed by these words – as well as the actual music of the first quartet – can easily be guessed at. Yet experience must serve as a reminder that with this man nothing can be assumed to be obvious: in a particularly impassioned speech at Bucknell University (USA) in 1981 his son Maxim warned us all never to be deceived. With unexpected reference to this quartet he then proceeded to explain Shostakovich’s manner of speaking in opposites…..
A “springtime” work, then; an enjoyable and – by the end – thoroughly invigorating work, in true Russian tradition. It might be as well, though, to heed the composer’s advice and not look for too much depth in it: for if we do we might surprise ourselves (and prove Maxim’s point) by finding what we were looking for…. Yet its outwardly unpretentious nature would suggest that, unlike so many other composers of quartets since Beethoven, Shostakovich was less inclined to be inhibited by any lofty ambition to emulate the example of his great predecessor. There is certainly a genial and unconcerned serenity here, all the more precious because of the work’s brevity. Each movement is a much simplified version of the normal Classical design, the second being a set of variations on an unaccompanied viola melody – which sounds as if it ought to be a Russian folk tune (it isn’t!). The finale is assuredly the most complex of the four, and at the same time the wittiest and most high spirited; yet even within such a compressed time scale there are one or two moments of breathtaking stillness, particularly near the end; but this is soon swept aside in an irresistible flourish of reckless abandon.
Although it was the Glazunov Quartet who gave the first performance of Quartet No.1 (in Leningrad, on 10 October 1938) it was the Beethoven Quartet who were entrusted with the Moscow première, six days later. Thus began a quite remarkable creative relationship which continued for the rest of the composer’s life. One wonders whether Shostakovich would have turned to the medium with such frequency and assurance had not this very special ensemble been constantly available to him as an inspiration and a faithful mouthpiece. Following the death of Vassily Shirinsky (the second violinist) in 1966, he said to the quartet’s leader, Dmitri Tsyganov, “We all take leave of life sooner or later, but the Beethoven Quartet must go on for fifty years, for a hundred years. It is your duty to ensure that the Quartet remains at the high level it should maintain, even when its senior members gradually depart.” This advice was heeded, for although two further members died during Shostakovich’s lifetime, all three were replaced in turn by younger players. Eventually Tsyganov himself decided to retire, but the Beethoven Quartet nevertheless continued for several more years, albeit with none of its original members.
© Alan George
