The Eder Quartet, formed in 1973 by students of the Liszt Academy in Budapest, won first prize at the 1976 Evian International String Quartet Competition.
Composition History
Shostakovich's graduation work, the First Symphony, premiered in Leningrad in May 1926 and achieved considerable success, with later performances in Berlin and Philadelphia.
Historical Context
Shostakovich's career unfolded against the political and cultural backdrop of the Soviet regime, including the 1905 Bloody Sunday events and later Stalinist repression.
Composition History
Shostakovich composed fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets between 1939 and 1974, with his first quartet appearing after he had already written five symphonies.
Composer Biography
Shostakovich supported his family as a cinema pianist after his father's death in 1922, despite his own poor health.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Shostakovich learned to use music's ambiguous nature to survive political strictures without sacrificing artistic integrity, often employing irony as a mode of expression.
Composer Biography
Dmitri Shostakovich, born in St. Petersburg in 1906, began piano lessons at age nine and entered the Petrograd Conservatory at thirteen.
