Program: Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No.8., Op.110 Alfred Schnittke: String Quartet No.3. (1983) Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Quintet, Op.57 Keller Quartet: András Keller - violin Zsófia Környei - violin Zoltán Gál - viola Judit Szabó - cello featuring Gábor Csalog on piano The second concert of the Keller Quartet's series is dedicated to two composers, who were citizens of the Soviet Union under the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Brezhnev and their choice for surviving was to balance between contradictory co-operation and isolation. Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 was written shortly after two traumatic events in the life of the composer: the first presentation of debilitating muscular weakness that would eventually (in 1965) be diagnosed as a rare form of polio, and his reluctant joining of the Communist Party. According to the score, it is dedicated 'to the victims of fascism and war'; his son, Maxim, interprets this as a reference to the victims of all totalitarianism, while his daughter Galina says that he dedicated it to himself, and that the published dedication was imposed by the Russian authorities. Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsky, said that Shostakovich thought of the work as his epitaph. The work was written in Dresden, where Shostakovich was to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint project by Soviet and East German film-makers about Bombing of Dresden in World War II. In the 1980s, Alfred Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad, thanks in part to the work of émigré Soviet artists such as the violinists Gidon Kremer and Mark Lubotsky. Despite constant illness, he produced a large amount of music, including important works of his chamber music ouvre, such as the Second (1980) and Third (1983) String Quartets and the String Trio (1985). The Piano Quintet in g-minor is one of Shostakovich's best known chamber works. He began work on the piece in the summer of 1940 and completed it on September 14. It was written for the Beethoven Quartet, as were most of his string quartets, and premièred by them with Shostakovich himself at the piano on November 23, 1940 at the Moscow Conservatory, to great success. In 1941, it was awarded the Stalin Prize.
Tickets for 2000 HUF are available at BMC, in the national JEGYPONT network of Interticket and at JEGY.HU
Next concert of the series on February 28!