1. Andante
2. Allegretto furioso
3. Adagio –
4. Allegretto – Andante

Shostakovich’s Tenth Quartet was composed in July 1964, and dedicated to his close friend Miecysław Weinberg (1919–96). Written in the space of eleven days, its four movements are often uneasy, its moods ranging from ambivalence to anger. Based on two main ideas, the first movement opens with an unadorned violin melody and the music develops quite freely: Gerald Abraham described it as ‘one of those movements so characteristic of Shostakovich, which it is foolish to try to refer to any conventional form’, adding that the ideas ‘develop freely … as a plant develops.’ The second movement, marked Allegretto furioso is filled with rage, its opening theme, in descending whole-tones is a familiar Shostakovich fingerprint (similar to passages in the Eighth Quartet and the first movement of the Fifth Symphony). The anger here is palpable, and Judith Kuhn wrote that this music was ‘perhaps the most successful and exciting of the composer’s attempts to use the string quartet to depict large-scale conflict.’ It sustained intensity is astonishing. The Adagio is Passacaglia (ground bass), a favourite form for Shostakovich, here used to powerful expressive effect. At the end of the movement, the passacaglia theme passes from the bass to the first violin, ending on a sustained note which is held over into the start of the concluding Allegretto. This begins with a dance-like theme (a kind of Trepak, reminiscent of Mussorgsky), but as the movement develops, earlier themes from the quartet return, including the passacaglia theme which is combined with the trepak, as well as material from other movements. The quartet ends with all four instruments in the upper register, fragments of motifs dissolving into near silence. 

The first performance was given on 20 November 1964 in the Moscow Conservatory, repeated the next day in the Glinka Concert Hall in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), played on both occasions by the Beethoven Quartet. 

Nigel Simone 2025