The Soviet Century

This is the first installment in the Pacifica Quartet’s highly anticipated, four-volume CD survey of the complete Shostakovich string quartets: The Soviet Experience: String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich and his Contemporaries. The Soviet Experience is the first Shostakovich quartet cycle to include works by other important composers of the Soviet era, adding variety and perspective to the listening experience.

Chicago-based Cedille label's ambitious "The Soviet Experience" series continues with this set of early Shostakovich string quartets from the 15 years surrounding World War II, along with one unusual Prokofiev quartet of the same period. In addition to reflecting the situations in which he lived, Shostakovich's quartets deal with a different kind of legacy as well: the Beethovenian tradition of the string quartet as it developed through the 19th century and became an outlet for inward emotion refined into well-crafted melody and counterpoint.

The Pacifica Quartet's cycle of Shostakovich's string quartets, joined with several by Mieczyslaw Weinberg under the rubric "The Soviet Experience," has rightly earned wide acclaim for the group's combination of technical expertise and rich emotional palette. The middle to late Shostakovich quartets heard here were composed in the 1960s, when in the West any suggestion that music was rooted in personal "experience" was met with high academic disdain. But time has proven Shostakovich's experiences to have resonances beyond his own situation and place.