ConcertPulse
NDR Chamber Music Concert / Elphier-Quartett
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet in C minor is one of the composers most personal works. There are striking allusions to Wagner’s »Götterdämmerung« and Tchaikovsky’s confessional symphony »Pathétique«. But Shostakovich also immortalised himself, with themes from earlier works as well as the musical code D-Es-C-H. The piece was composed in 1960 during a visit to Dresden, which was destroyed in 1945. The horrors of the destruction shocked Shostakovich so much that he dedicated the quartet to the victims of war and fascism.