Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68 (1944)

I. Overture (Moderato con moto)
II. Recitative and Romance (Adagio)
III. Waltz (Allegro)
IV. Theme with Variations (Adagio)

Beethoven Quartet
Dmitri Tsyganov, 1st Violin / Vasili Shirinsky, 2nd Violin
Vadim Borisovsky, Viola / Sergei Shirinsky, Cello
(LP transfer; recorded Jan. 3 & 7, 1956)

Dmitri Shostakovich

String Quartet No. 5 in B flat major, Op. 92 (1952)

I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante III. Moderato

(played without pause)

Beethoven Quartet:

Dmitri Tsyganov, 1st Violin / Vasili Shirinsky, 2nd Violin

Vadim Borisovsky, Viola / Sergei Shirinsky, Cello

(LP transfer; recorded Oct. 24 & 28, 1953)

Dmitri Shostakovich

String Quartet No. 6 in G major, Op. 101 (1956)

I. Allegretto
II. Moderato con moto
III. Lento
IV. Lento - Allegretto

Beethoven Quartet:
Dmitri Tsyganov, 1st Violin / Vasili Shirinsky, 2nd Violin
Vadim Borisovsky, Viola / Sergei Shirinsky, Cello
(LP transfer; recorded Oct. 13, 1956)

Dmitri Shostakovich

String Quartet No. 9 in E flat major, Op. 117 (1964)

I. Moderato con moto
II. Adagio
III. Allegretto
IV. Adagio
V. Allegro

Beethoven Quartet
Dmitri Tsyganov, 1st Violin / Vasili Shirinsky, 2nd Violin
Vadim Borisovsky, Viola / Sergei Shirinsky, Cello
(LP transfer; recorded Feb. 1, 1965)

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Sidney Finkelstein, from the notes for Shostakovich's Quartet No. 4, Op. 83 & Quartet No. 5, Op. 92 (Vanguard VRS 6021, issued 1955):

What is the meaning of these two extraordinary and compelling works? It is a legitimate question to ask, for Shostakovich has never been a composer fond of pure sound for its own sake. He wrote his Tenth Symphony, as summarized by the critic Irving Kolodin, that "it is a work which resists the drift to war, one which conceives man's function on earth to be creative rather than destructive." This thinking and feeling are found in the quartets. A catastrophic war is ten years over. And yet the peace is troubled. The shadow lies over the entire world of atomic war. One can fight through the anguish this arouses, but this is a struggle that demands belief in the triumph of human qualities, faith that people will not permit their own destruction. As to a plan by which this consummation can be achieved, that is not within the province of a string quartet. 

Daniil Zhitomirsky, from Our business is to rejoice! (Shostakovich Reconsidered, written and edited by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov, Toccata Press, 1998):

'Our business is to rejoice!'

In my entire life, I will not forget either this aphorism, or the first moment I first heard it. The year 1945. 'Ivanovo'. Summer. On 8 August, along with Nina Vasil'yevna, who had gone to Moscow for a few days, Dmitry Dmitryevich arrived. I came to meet the whole family, including his children Galya and Maxim. In the car, on our ride back from the train station, D. D. told me, for the first time, about the 'uranium bomb' that had been dropped on Hiroshima. He was talking about it in short, quick phrases, without any further comments (the one who commented on 'what atomic fission is' was Nina Vasil'yevna, who was a trained physicist). Shostakovich's agitation could be heard in the hoarse, constrained quality of his voice and seen in his vacant look and pallor. Later, we walked in silence from the car to the destitute little dacha where he was composing the Ninth Symphony at the time. My mind was reeling under the spell of the news and I said something very pessimistic. D. D., staring at a point in space, quickly and automatically cut me off: 'Our business is to rejoice!'

Dwight Macdonald, from Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Politics, September, 1945; quoted in: Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art - Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War, University of Chicago, 1983):

The Authorities have made valiant attempts to reduce the thing [the atom bomb] to a human context, where such concepts as Justice, Reason, Progress could be employed.... The flimsiness of these justifications is apparent; any atrocious action, absolutely any one, could be excused on such grounds. For there is really only one possible answer to the problem posed by Dostoevski's Grand Inquisitor: if all mankind could realize eternal and complete happiness by torturing to death a single child, would this act be morally justified? ... From President Truman down, they emphasized that the Bomb has been produced in the normal, orderly course of scientific experiment, that it is thus simply the latest step in man's long struggle to control the forces of nature, in a word that it is Progress.

The Bomb is the natural product of the kind of society we have created. It is as easy, normal and unforced an expression of the American Way of Life as electric ice-boxes, banana splits and hydromatic-drive automobiles.

Again, the effort to "humanize" the Bomb by showing how it fits into our normal everyday life also cuts the other way: it reveals how inhuman our normal life has become.

[author's comment: "For Macdonald, the dehumanization of society that made it possible to produce a weapon as sophisticated as the atom bomb, that made it possible for 125,000 workers to participate in a project without knowing the purpose of what they were doing, was incomprehensible. Under such conditions, he maintained, the words 'democracy,' 'freedom,' 'progress,' and 'science' no longer meant anything."]

Dmitri Shostakovich, from Testimony - The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (Faber and Faber, 1979):

I discovered to my astonishment that the man who considers himself its greatest interpreter does not understand my music. [Yevgeny Mravinsky] He says that I wanted to write exultant finales for my Fifth and Seventh Symphonies but I couldn't manage it. It never occurred to this man that I never thought about any exultant finales, for what exultation could there be? I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under a threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing" and you rise, shakily, and go marching off muttering "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."

What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that. Fadayev heard it, and he wrote in his diary, for his personal use, that the finale of the Fifth is irreparable tragedy. He must have felt it with his Russian alcoholic soul.

[Alexander Alexandrovich Fadayev (1901-1956), an author set up by Stalin as head of the Writer's Union. He signed many sanctions for the arrest of writers (as did the heads of the other 'creative' unions for their members). After a shift in internal Soviet politics, he committed suicide.]