Dmitri Shostakovich String Quartet No 7 Op 108 1960

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Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (Дми́трий Дми́триевич Шостако́вич, tr. Dmitriy Dmitrievich Shostakovich 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet composer and pianist, and a prominent figure of 20th-century music. • String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor, Op. 108 (1960) • In Memory of Nina Shostakovich • 1. Allegretto (0:00) • 2. Lento (3:22) • 3. Allegro - Allegretto - [Adagio] (7:00) • Fitzwilliam Quartet • The String Quartet No. 7 was preceded by the Cello Concerto No. 1 (1959), a work for years thought to be optimistic, but now viewed in a different light as recent interpretations by cellists and conductors have emphasized its darker side. The Quartet No. 8, Op. 110, would come later in the year and divulge not only the kind of bleakness and tragedy heard in the Seventh, but a brutality and harshness as well, a somewhat unusual combination in Shostakovich's works from any period. • It appears from all the evidence that Shostakovich had begun to reassess the direction of his career in the years around 1960, turning away from the less adventurous and simplistic worlds of works like the patriotic 1954 Festive Overture and 1957 Piano Concerto No. 2. Still, he would write the bombastic and relatively weak Symphony No. 12, The Year 1917, in 1961, fortunately his last major effort to kowtow to party officials. • The Quartet No. 7 is cast in three continuous movements, each quite short; the whole has a duration of only about 12 minutes. The opening Allegretto begins with a descending three-note theme whose character is both cynical and nonchalant. As the movement progresses, the mood darkens, setting the stage for the ensuing Lento. Here the music is brooding and melancholy, with an eerie, lyrical main theme whose chilling harmonies taint the sonic fabric with perversely satisfying color. The finale begins with a rush of anxious energy which is then interrupted briefly for a return to the closing harmonies of the Lento. A nervous, driving theme appears, and now both thematic and rhythmic elements from the previous two movements are presented. The latter half of the finale is somewhat subdued in its restatements of the main theme and other materials. • The work was premiered on May 15, 1960, by the Beethoven Quartet. • Background of the work: • All politics are local, we are told. Or, in the case of Shostakovich, all politics are personal. In 1960, when he composed his Seventh String Quartet, Shostakovich should have been enjoying the artistic fruits of the post-Stalin thaw. But his personal life was a shambles, and this Quartet marks an intensification in the composer's development of sardonic introversion as a sustaining force. His first wife, Nina Varzar, had died unexpectedly in December 1954, followed by his mother less than a year later. He married a Communist Youth League worker in 1956 and was divorced three years later. He proposed to his former pupil, composer Galina Ustvolskaya, twice and was rejected twice. • Shostakovich seemed to be working through much of this in his Quartet No. 7, dedicated to the memory of Nina. Not at length, however - its three short, tightly knit movements run barely 12 minutes. The first is a nervous Allegretto, a sort of musical state of denial, superficially casual but growing darker as it edges through metrical transformation toward the following Lento. That is eerie, lonely music - all four instruments hardly ever play at the same time. The viola's obsessively circling accompaniment figure becomes the subject of the feverish fugue that opens the final movement. Its contrapuntal energy gradually dissipates with recollections of previous motives, and the Quartet ends with an odd little waltz, like the ghost of Nina dancing in Shostakovich's memory.

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