Kammersymphonie shostakovich biography youtube

Chamber symphony in C minor op. In fact, it is not an original composition, but a masterful adaptation for string orchestra of his Quartet No 8 Op. Made with the special permission of the Master in by the famous conductor Rudolf Barshai, founder and artistic director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. The plot tells of eight Soviet soldiers sent to find valuable paintings stolen by the Nazis in the ruins of the city.

Dmitry Dmitrievich was accommodated to compose at the government residence in the resort of Gohrisch. Experiencing a terrible depression after the pressure to become a member of the Communist Party and excited by the senseless destruction of historic Dresden in by British and American bombers, instead of the film score, he created his Quartet No 8 in three days.

Even more so in his works.

I.

Behind the formal dedication of the Eighth Quartet, there is another initiation. Instead, I composed a quartet that was unnecessary and ideologically unsustainable. I thought that if I died suddenly, hardly anyone would write and dedicate a work to my memory. So I decided to do something similar myself. The leitmotif of the quartet are my initials D.

The pseudo-tragedy of this quartet is such that as I wrote it, I shed as many tears as you shed after half a dozen mugs of beer. When I got home, I tried to play it twice, and tears came to my eyes again. But no longer only because of its pseudo-tragedy, but also because of the astonishment of the wonderful integrity of the form.

The leitmotif of the DSCH sound monogram permeates the entire quartet.