Alexander Melnikov & Cuarteto Casals/1 Presented by Liszt Academy

Shostakovich wrote his major early pieces – Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 and the Piano Sonata No. 1 – a hundred years after Beethoven’s death. The Viennese maestro’s creative ideas were still very much alive then and perhaps most enduringly so in the works of Shostakovich. The genres specifically cultivated by Beethoven became the primary media of personal communication for Shostakovich, and, just like Mahler, he was convinced that music after Beethoven was able to talk about concrete things without any comment. Incidentally, he commissioned a Soviet string quartet that had adopted Beethoven’s name to premiere his Piano Quintet in G minor, one of his best-known and best-liked chamber pieces. The audience at the time was overwhelmed by the composition. As one witness recalled, “every face radiated with a feeling of great pleasure and gratitude. An elderly gentleman did not even notice that tears were streaming down his face”.