Ruben Aharonian, Igor Naidin, Valentin Berlinsky, Andrei Abramenkov & Borodin Quartet
Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110
Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110
The Borodin Quartet, consisting of Valentin Berlinsky (Cello), Andrei Abramenkov (Violin), Igor Naidin (Viola) and Ruben Aharonian (Violin) perform Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110 at the Kuhmo Festival for Chamber Music 2002. The work was composed in only three days in Dresden in 1960, where Shostakovich was to provide the music for the joint Soviet–East German film Five Days, Five Nights. The composition is dedicated "to the victims of fascism and the war”. Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsky, thought the composer saw the work as his epitaph and that he planned to commit suicide around this time. The quartet opens with the ‘DSCH’ motif, which became Shostakovich's musical signature. This motif is used in all five movements. The work is filled with quotations of earlier Shostakovich pieces and has been transcribed by Barshai for string orchestra, in which version it is known as the Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a.