Performances

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Arlington Central Library

String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110

Dmitri Shostakovich

Largo
Allegro Molto
Allegretto
Largo
Largo

Approx. time: 22 minutes

String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2, Rasumovsky

Ludwig van Beethoven

Allegro
Molto adagio
Allegretto
Finale: presto

Approx. time: 33 minutes

Program Notes

String Quartet No. 8 – Shostakovich

There is nothing bright or hopeful about Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet no. 8. Composed in just three days in the summer of 1960, the Quartet, like much of Shostakovich’s music, is shrouded in at least some amount of ambiguity: the score is dedicated “to the memory of the victims of fascism and war” and, in public, Shostakovich said that the music was inspired by the sight of the bombed-out ruins of Dresden. Yet, in private, he referred to the work as a memorial for its composer and it is clearly filled with highly personal references and musical quotations. Its composition coincided with a period of deep despair when, for a time, Shostakovich was apparently suicidal. While, as a general rule, it’s unwise to look too closely for autobiographical significance in any composer’s work, this Quartet makes for a glaring exception.

The Quartet’s defining musical feature is heard in its first four notes: these are Shostakovich’s initials, DSCH, spelled out in musical notation – the notes D, E-flat, C, and B natural. Each of the Quartet’s five connected movements refer back to this motive in some form.

Its opening movement is essentially an elegy that recalls musical textures most closely associated with the Baroque era, particularly quasi-fugal, imitative counterpoint. The first of the work’s several quotations – a snatch from Shostakovich’s First Symphony – interrupts this aural portrait of despair, but doesn’t really lift the gloom.

The second movement bursts in on the first without warning. This is music of a completely contrasting emotion, violent and surging, recalling the fast movements of Shostakovich’s Eighth and Tenth Symphonies. At the end comes another self-quotation: the famous theme from the Piano Trio no. 2.

In the midst of this music of grief and tumult comes the third movement, a bitter, ironic waltz that is built around the DSCH motive. Shostakovich loved waltzes – they turn up in a surprising amount of his chamber music for a 20th-century composer – and, like Tchaikovsky, he could spin out a good tune like nobody’s business. But this waltz is downright chilling: it sounds like a dance of skeletons.

After this macabre ballroom scene comes the most fascinating movement of the piece. The fourth movement starts with repeated, dissonant chords that recall gunshots or – as has been suggested – the dreaded knock of the KGB on Shostakovich’s front door (which, thankfully for the composer, never actually came). What follows is a fascinating collage of melodies, both from Shostakovich’s own music as well as from other sources: there’s a snatch of an aria from his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; a motive that suggests the Dies irae chant; and a Russian folk song called “Tormented by Grievous Bondage.” To hammer home the message, at the very end comes the DSCH motive. It’s the musical equivalent of watching a slideshow of horrors playing out in slow motion.

Like the first movement, the finale is based primarily on the DSCH motive and features many of the same compositional devices and textures heard earlier. But its overall affect is numbness: Ilya Ehrenburg’s comment that, “without saying anything [music] can express everything,” is borne out as powerfully in this closing movement as anywhere else in the repertoire.

Credit to Jonathan Blumhofer

String Quartet No. 8 – Beethoven

Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, commissioned Beethoven to write the three quartets of Op.59 in 1805 for the Schuppanzigh Quartet. The Count was an amateur violinist and frequently played as second violinist with the Schuppanzigh Quartet, a group he funded and whose members were considered to be some of Vienna’s finest string players. In his commission, Count Razumovsky’s only specific request of Beethoven was that Russian folk tunes be significantly featured in the music. Beethoven fulfilled this request in two of the three quartets, but with melodies that are, as he put it, “real or imitated” Russian themes. The Op.59 set was completed in 1806, after the “Eroica” Symphony of 1803, six years after his earlier Op. 18 quartets, and immediately following the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” Piano Sonatas. In the three-year period of 1803-06, Beethoven completed his Fourth Piano concerto, Piano Sonata in F, Op.54, his Triple Concerto, 3 Leonore Overtures, the three Op.59 quartets and his opera Fidelio, thereby demonstrating his mastery of the genres of the symphony, sonata, concerto, opera and string quartet. With the publication of the Op.59 quartets, Beethoven moved the genre of the string quartet out of the small “chamber” setting and onto a larger stage. Each of the Op.59 quartets stands as a monumental individual work, both in terms of literal size and dramatic scope.

The Quartet in E Minor, Op.59, No.2 is a work wrought with tension and emotional depth, and one has the sense that this is “big music” from the outset. Beethoven’s symphonic approach to the use of the instruments of the quartet creates a canvas that feels emotionally limitless.

The pathos laden first movement opens with two declamatory chords covering the interval of a fifth. Following a bar of silence, the first violin and cello introduce the first motivic figure. This opening motive quivers with quiet energy, full of dramatic promise. The unique opening phrase structure of 3 bars+3 bars+4 bars (including bars of silence) helps to create a sense of spaciousness and of uncertainty. The concise sonata form first movement bustles with energy, and eventually finds its way to sure-footed emotional ground. The arrival of the second theme brings a sense of relief, but as with many of Beethoven’s most dramatic works, it doesn’t last long. A rising tide of syncopation, shared by the quartet, ushers back the tolling chords from the opening. Spurred by accents and rhythmic energy, the movement covers a huge emotional range. Relatively simple melodic material is countered by a harmonic complexity that to this point had not been explored in the writing of quartets. Beethoven moves the music through a myriad of harmonic sequences in the development, heightening the listener’s sense of ebbing emotions and never allowing us to settle comfortably on one central key. The movement closes with a forte statement of the melodic motive that opened the movement, and then fades to a close.

According to Beethoven’s friend and student Carl Czerny, “the Adagio in E Major occurred to him when contemplating the starry sky and thinking of the music of the spheres.” To help us grasp the transporting beauty of this music, Beethoven clearly writes in the score, “this piece is to be played with great feeling.” An opening eight-bar hymn conjures a “heavenly” feeling, and immediately contrasts the feelings left in the wake of the first movement. The texture is dappled with triplets, dotted rhythms, and the ever-present hymn, giving us a feeling expansiveness and intimacy. The hymn appears one final time in the coda of the movement in fortissimo, with strong sforzandi
pushing us toward the conclusion of the movement.

The E minor Allegretto offers us a landscape of simplicity and clarity after the Adagio. The simple tune is accompanied with a sparse rhythm, keeping the texture uncluttered. At the trio, marked Maggiore, Beethoven finally introduces his six-bar folk tune, “Theme Russe”, in an unexpected fugue.

The presto Finale begins in C major, although the key signature denotes E minor. The symphonic physicality of this music is punctuated by driving rhythm and the energy of the running melodic lines. The return to the rondo theme is achieved through a playful passing of the first three notes of the melody between all four instruments. The closing prestissimo brings the piece to its impassioned final chords.

Credit to Kurt Baldwin