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Shostakovich Quartet No. 6 in G Major, Opus 101
Shostakovich’s sudden re-marriage in the summer of 1956 caught even his closest friends by surprise. His first wife, the physicist Nina Varzar, had died suddenly in December 1954, and eighteen months later the shy composer impulsively proposed to a pretty young party official, Margarita Kainova. She just as impulsively accepted, and they were married in…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major, Opus 92
Shostakovich wrote his Fifth String Quartet in the fall of 1952, but it remained in manuscript, unperformed, for over a year—and for very good reasons. Not only were these some of the darkest years of the Cold War, they were also the paranoid final years of Stalin’s repressive regime. Four years earlier, at the 1948…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 4 in D Major, Opus 83
The Soviet crackdown on composers in February 1948 remains, over half a century later, one of the most devastating examples of government interference and censorship in history. Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky, and others were excoriated for their “formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies” and for writing “confused, neuropathological combinations which transform music into cacophony.” These composers…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Opus 73
The Third String Quartet was Shostakovich’s only composition during the year 1946. He dedicated it to the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who gave the first performance in Moscow on their namesake’s 176th birthday, December 16, 1946. The mention of Beethoven is apt, for many observers have felt that this quartet, particularly in its heartfelt…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 2, in A Major, Op. 68
The works Shostakovich composed during World War II—or, as the Russians call it, The Great Patriotic War—form a distinct chapter in his output. These include the wartime music one might expect—marches, choruses, and even settings of songs of Russia’s allies (including, in 1943, an arrangement of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)—but Shostakovich made his major…
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Shostakovich String Quartet No. 1, Op. 49
Shostakovich wrote his String Quartet No. 1 during a defining interlude in his career. He had achieved international fame at age 20 with his First Symphony, and his 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District— with its explicit sexual content and sordid events—had reinforced that reputation during performances as far away as Cleveland, London,…
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Cheryl North features Saturday’s Mozart Series!
Cheryl North of San Jose Mercury News features the third installment of our Mozart in Vienna series at the SFJazz Center! “The third and fourth concerts of San Francisco Performances’ four-part lecture/performance “Mozart in Vienna” series take place Saturday morning and April 5 at the relaxed, audience-friendly San Francisco Jazz Center. The lecturer will be…
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The Final Schubert of 2012
Saturday marks the final San Francisco Performances Schubert Series concert of 2012. ASQ will be accompanied by cellist Eugene Sor and SF Performances music historian-in-residence Robert Greenberg! Saturday, Dec. 15 – 10:00am San Francisco Performances Inc. St. John’s Presbyterian Church Berkeley, California Tickets: www.performances.org Program: ASQ with lecturer, Robert Greenberg Schubert Quintet in C Major,…
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San Francisco Performances Presents Saturday Morning Schubert
From San Francisco Performances: “Is it a concert series? Scholarly lectures? Classical music stand-up? The ASQ with Robert Greenberg is all three and more. For more than twenty years, these five passionate performers, avid scholars and friends have presented an entertaining, alchemical mix of chamber music and chat exploring the works of composers, their lives,…
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Franz Schubert at St. John’s
Saturday ASQ travels to St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California to perform the first San Francisco Performances concert of the season! Is it a concert series? Scholarly lectures? Classical music stand-up? The ASQ with Robert Greenberg is all three and more. For more than twenty years, these five passionate performers, avid scholars and friends…
