Emerson String Quartet: Shostakovich Cycle - Part 4
The Emerson Quartet continues its journey through the string quartets of Dmitry Shostakovich, works that reveal the composer’s innermost secrets.
Shostakovich is a composer about whom we know everything and yet know nothing.
Under a totalitarian regime in Russia, he played his cards close to his chest in his public-facing symphonies and operas.
In his monumental cycle of 15 string quartets, we get closer to the real Shostakovich. This music reveals the composer as an unparalleled diarist of anxiety and despair.
As it prepares to hang up its bows forever, one of the great ensembles of our time, the Emerson Quartet, completes its landmark traversal of Shostakovich’s quartets at the Southbank Centre.
This concert marks the beginning of the end. The Emersons start with the Tenth Quartet from 1964 – fierce and furious when it isn’t simmering with foreboding.
Then come the two works dedicated to the violinists in Shostakovich’s own favourite string quartet, the Beethoven String Quartet.
No.11 sounds heavy with loss. No.12, in contrast, is a Rubik’s Cube of a piece that encompasses brilliance and loneliness in its search for resolution.
Performers
- Emerson String Quartet
Repertoire
- Shostakovich: String Quartet No.10 in A flat, Op.118; String Quartet No.11 in F minor, Op.122
- Interval
- Shostakovich: String Quartet No.12 in D flat, Op.133
Need to know
For ages 7+
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