Strauss. Shostakovich

The Mariinsky Theatre Stradivari Ensemble is a group of musicians who perform on the world’s most famous and unique-sounding string instruments in the world. The ensemble was founded on the initiative of Valery Gergiev, Artistic and General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre. The  Stradivari Ensemble includes the finest instrumentalists and lead soloists in the Mariinsky Orchestra. Popular and well-loved classical works sound completely different when performed by them than at an average concert thanks to the incredibly rich and beautiful timbres of the instruments of Amati, Stradivari, Guarneri, Guadanini and Gofriller.

Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen (1945) is a grandiose adagio for twenty-three string instruments. It is one of the most personal and touching works in the composer’s entire musical legacy. The direct reason for its being written lay in the tragic events of the last few months of World War II, of which the German maestro wrote to his friend Joseph Gregor: “I am in a despairing mood! Goethe’s home has been destroyed, that wonderful holy place in this world! My beautiful Dresden – Weimar – Munich, all in ruins!” Strauss did not conceal the programme idea of the piece, which was to be a farewell the great culture of Germany, of which the composer saw himself as the last representative, and at the same time is was a reflection of his own past life. In Metamorphosen there are motifs of a sad prayer for the dead that form the work’s core, and there are many musical allusions – King Marke’s theme from Wagner’s Tristan and Mandryka’s theme from Arabella, written together with the great playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The unique motto of the work comes with the theme of the Funeral March from Beethoven’s symphony Eroica, the most unambiguous work which the composer adorned with the words “In memoriam”.
Nadezhda Koulygina

Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet enjoys a popularity rare for a work that is so academic in terms of genre. The reason is the programme, which Shostakovich exhaustively expounded in a letter to Isaak Glikman, telling his friend of his arrival in July 1960 at a resort in Saxon Switzerland near Dresden: “I watched materials of the film Five Days, Five Nights directed by Lev Arnshtam. I settled in very well to create the right artistic surroundings. The artistic conditions justified themselves: I composed my Eighth Quartet there. However much I tried to execute my tasks in rough for the cinematic film, I have as yet been unable to do so. And instead of that I wrote an ideologically empty quartet that no-one needed. I considered that if I ever die then it is extremely unlikely anyone would write a work dedicated to my memory. And so I decided to write one myself.”
Shostakovich wrote this musical “auto-epitaph” literally a few days after he had been unable to avoid joining the CPSU (although he had refused to join the party several times, it having destroyed the lives of so many people). In the music, the programme is expressed just as clearly. The quartet opens with a monogram there (D-Es-C-H), which runs through all five parts, in places even becoming importunate. The composer’s self-portrait is completed using themes from his First, Eighth and Tenth Symphonies, the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, his Piano Trio and Cello Concerto. The themes come with “hints” of Wagner’s Trauermarsch and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony as well as the revolutionary song Tormented by Grievous Bondage. Officially, the quartet is dedicated to the memory of victims of fascism and war. There are different versions of the Eighth Quartet for various performing ensembles. Rudolf Barshai’s orchestration was given the title Chamber Symphony.
Anna Bulycheva