Shostakovich: Piano Quintet; String Quartet No. 2

It is hard to envisage a more enticing prospect: Shostakovich’s densely woven String Quartet No 2 and his deceptively backward-looking Piano Quintet, performed by the stellar Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin, generously notated by David Fanning, and lovingly recorded by Hyperion’s Simon Eadon and Andrew Keener team. Seventy minutes of post-Revolutionary Russian ecstasy.
Between the ages of ten and thirty, Shostakovich lived through the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy, the Bolshevik coup, the early death of his father, the privations of Civil War, the painful compromises of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, the ascent to power of Joseph Stalin, a helter-skelter industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, famine, show trials and the incipient Great Terror.

01. String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 I. Overture. Moderato con moto
02. String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 II. Recit. and Romance. Adagio
03. String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 III. Waltz. Allegro
04. String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 IV. Theme & Variations. Adagio – Moderato con moto – Allegretto – Allegro non trop
05. Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 I. Prelude. Lento – Poco più mosso – Lento
06. Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 II. Fugue. Adagio
07. Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 III. Scherzo. Allegretto
08. Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 IV. Intermezzo. Lento
09. Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57 V. Finale. Allegretto
booklet.pdf