String Quartet No. 5 in B flat major
op. 92 (1952)VAAP
Like the Third Quartet, Shostakovich’s Fifth Quartet bears a dedication to his longtime friends in the Beethoven Quartet. But it also contains within itself hints of another secret dedication. The first movement begins as a neoclassical and highly compressed sonata-form structure, complete with a repeat of the exposition, a device that features in several of the composer’s earlier quartets. Once the repeat has happened however and the development section has started, the music begins to get more and more passionate until a startling moment when all four instruments erupt with a completely new melody marked fff espressivo. This strange new melody then reappears at the end of this movement, this time played tenderly by the first violin while the other three instruments throb beneath. The first violin then holds the extremely high last note of the melody on to linger in the air and be the starting point for a very beautiful slow movement, one of the composer’s most evocative and lyrical inspirations. The third and last movement is like an arch which rises out of quietness and returns to it, but becomes very dramatic at the middle point when once again the strange melody from the first movement reappears, this time loudly and expressively in the two violins with the viola and cello attacking the melody from beneath.
The explanation is fascinating. This strange melody which evidently haunted Shostakovich is a quotation from a 1949 trio for clarinet, violin and piano, written by perhaps the greatest composer ever to be a pupil of his, the distinguished Galina Ustvolskaya. Ustvolskaya has angrily disputed the various claims that others have made about her closeness to her teacher. But one thing is certain: he felt passionately enough about her music to place it at the heart of his Fifth Quartet.
The Fifth Quartet was written in the sombre last months of Stalin’s rule over the Soviet Union. Given the circumstances of the time, Shostakovich held the work back for a few months and it was first performed in November of the following year, by which time the dictator had been dead for eight months.
Note by Gerard McBurney