Czech Chamber Music Society • Alinde Quintet

String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (19')

Dmitri Shostakovich (arr. by Mark A. Popkin)

String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110, inscribed “In memory of victims of fascism and war”, was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) in 1960. For almost 30 years, Shostakovich was being accused of “formalism” and considered to be “an artist alienated from the people” by critics from the highest echelons of power in the Soviet Union, but in the Western world he has since become one of the most important figures in 20th-century music. The political liberalization of the mid-1950s also changed Shostakovich’s situation: on 9 April 1960, he was elected secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, and in September of the same year he was accepted as a candidate of the Communist Party. In the summer months between these two dates he stayed in Dresden and in a sanatorium in Saxon Switzerland, where he worked on music for the film Five Days, Five Nights. The film takes place in the aftermath of the bombing of Dresden at the end of the war. The impressions of the destruction of Dresden evoked in Shostakovich his own wartime memories of the devastated Leningrad, and so in a span of three days he composed String Quartet No. 8 to express grief over all the unnecessary victims of the war’s fury. It became a personal statement at this particular point in Shostakovich’s career. The String Quartet No. 8 opens with the acronym for the first four letters of Shostakovich’s name in German transliteration (DSCH – D, E flat, C, B natural; in German musical notation D, Es, C, H) that is repeatedly heard throughout the whole composition. String Quartet No. 8 consists of quotes from works by other composers as well as Shostakovich’s own music, such as the modified theme of his First Symphony, the second theme of his Fifth Symphony, or the theme of the final movement of his Piano Trio No. 2, derived from klezmer music as one of the distinctive elements of Shostakovich’s inspiration. The Scherzo is one of his typical grotesques in the rhythm of a demonic waltz, and the trio introduces another self-quote, this time from his Cello Concerto. String Quartet No. 8 also quotes revolutionary songs and Katerina Izmailova’s exclamations from Act 4 of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the performance of which in 1935 marked the beginning of Shostakovich’s politicized artistic struggle. The last two slow movements are among the most serious in Shostakovich’s oeuvre. The funeral march motif returns, and the piece closes with a fugue. String Quartet No. 8 was first performed on 2 October 1960 in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet, an ensemble with which the composer collaborated from 1940 until the end of his life. It was arranged by American bassoonist Mark Anthony Popkin (1929–2011), who also scored other pieces for string quintet, for example, Antonín Dvořák’s String Serenade, Op. 22.

Wind Quintet No. 2 “Music for a Deceased Friend” (10')

Pēteris Vasks

Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks (*1946) is one of the leading representatives of contemporary music from the Baltic states. In addition to inspiration from Latvian folklore, the impulses that contributed to the search for his own compositional style included the music by Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki. Vasks has composed works in a variety of genres. His Music for a Deceased Friend has autobiographical features. It was written in 1981 and is dedicated to the memory of Jana Barinska, who perished tragically during a fire. The primary building block of the piece is the interval of an

ascending third and a descending second as a harbinger of danger. The motif develops like the outbreak and spread of fire and becomes quiet in silent resignation. The composition is reminiscent of ancient Latvian funeral songs. The musical flow is interrupted by sighs and screams; Vasks also includes the human voice. The composition ends in complete silence.

Alinde Quintet