String Quartet No. 9

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 9 in E flat major (Op. 117) was composed in 1964 and premiered by the Beethoven Quartet. The Ninth Quartet was dedicated to his third wife, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, a young editor whom he had married in 1962. Shostakovich rarely changed or revised his works, but the Ninth Quartet is one of the rare exceptions. In Elizabeth Wilson's biography entitled "Shostakovich: A Life Remembered" she states: "Shos... more

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 9 in E flat major (Op. 117) was composed in 1964 and premiered by the Beethoven Quartet. The Ninth Quartet was dedicated to his third wife, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, a young editor whom he had married in 1962. Shostakovich rarely changed or revised his works, but the Ninth Quartet is one of the rare exceptions. In Elizabeth Wilson's biography entitled "Shostakovich: A Life Remembered" she states: "Shostakovich finished the first version of the Ninth Quartet in the autumn of 1961. In a fit of depression, or, to quote his own words, 'in an attack of healthy self-criticism, I burnt it in the stove. This is the second such case in my creative practice. I once did a similar trick of burning my manuscripts, in 1926'." It took Shostakovich three years to complete the "new" Ninth Quartet, which was completed on May 28, 1964, and premiered by the Beethoven Quartet in Moscow on November 20, 1964. The Beethoven Quartet had the exclusive rights to... less