Dmitri Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets (Box Set) [Box set]

Dmitri Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets (Box Set) [Box set]

On this CD:

1. String Quartet No 1, in C Major, Op. 49
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

2. String Quartet No 2, in A Major, Op. 68
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

3. String Quartet No 4, in D major, Op. 83
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

4. String Quartet No 3, in F Major, Op. 73
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

5. Pieces (2) for double string quartet, Op. 11
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

6. Quintet for piano & strings, in G Minor, Op. 57
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

7. String Quartet No 5, in B flat major, Op. 92
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

8. String Quartet No 6, in G major, Op. 101
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

9. String Quartet No 7, in F sharp Minor, Op. 108
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

10. String Quartet No 8, in C Minor, Op. 110
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

11. String Quartet No 9, in E flat major, Op. 117
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

12. String Quartet No 10, in A flat, Op. 118
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

13. String Quartet No 11, in F Minor, Op. 122
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

14. String Quartet No 12, in D flat major, Op. 133
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

15. String Quartet No 13, in B flat Minor, Op. 138
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

16. String Quartet No 14, in F sharp major, Op. 142
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

17. String Quartet No 15, in E flat Minor, Op. 144
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Rarely do we come across as intimate and wide-angled a set as this collection of Dmitri Shostakovich's 15 string quartets, all of them played by the Russian Borodin Quartet. Recorded in Moscow between 1978 and 1983, the quartets are excellently reproduced in digital sound by Sviatoslav Richter, who maintains just enough shadow from the old Melodiya vinyl's audio vérité to make the music breathe passionately. Of course, it's the Borodins who really amp up the musical breath, whether in their near-giddy reading of the third quartet's first movement or in the 14th's complex, stoutly metaphysical somberness. These recordings will likely always remain the standard for Shostakovich's chamber repertoire because the Borodins were so focused on the Russian quartet literature and so little of anything they played by one composer approached the immediate, mature fullness of Shostakovich's quartets from the first to the last. And they played the music with unflagging intensity. Over the six CDs, it's a fascinating exercise to hear the development of compositional elements between the first (1935) and 15th (1974, the year before his death) quartets. Variations on the passacaglia technique, for example, permeate the music, allowing telescopic focus on Shostakovich's careful mediation of the dialogue between constancy and change, flying motifs from violin to viola to cello and back even as it appeared little fundamental groundwork had changed. Polyphony, dissonance, and aching resonance find a home in the music, showing Shostakovich's Catholic reach--and surely the impetus for his long-standing troubled relationship with Soviet politics. --Andrew Bartlett

Amazon.com
Dmitri Shostakovich's 15 string quartets are second in quality only to Bartók's magnificent half-dozen among the sets produced in this form by 20th-century composers. But outside of Russia, they were ignored or disparaged for a long time, dismissed as "not really chamber music" and criticized for technical "weaknesses," largely because they did not follow the standard patterns invented and developed in Vienna. The Borodin Quartet, Russian colleagues and friends of Shostakovich (though not... read more

Dmitri Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets (Box Set) [Box set]

Dmitri Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets (Box Set), Music, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter, Borodin Quartet, Band, Box Sets (Audio Only), Chamber, Chamber Music & Recitals, Chamber Symphony, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Octet for Eight String Instruments, Quartet for Four String Instruments, Quintet for Keyboard and Four String Instruments

Dmitri Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets (Box Set) [Box set]

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