Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the twentieth-century's great musical geniuses, a composer who lived through one of the era’s most oppressive dictatorships. Now The Carducci Quartet will play his legendary cycle of fifteen quartets on the October Bank Holiday weekend, over a series of five concerts in the inimitable West Cork setting of Bantry House. Below, West Cork Chamber Music Festival Director Francis Humphrys introduces what promises to be one of the classical music events of the year.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, perhaps the greatest composer of the Twentieth Century, whose music trod the dangerous tightrope between the revelation of truth and terror at the consequences. For he lived in a world where speaking truth to power was at best a ticket to the Gulag. His cycle of fifteen overwhelming Quartets contain the intimate thoughts of a composer, who lived through one of the most oppressive dictatorships of the Twentieth Century. That time has come round again and, worldwide, art and power collide again.
Watch: Francis Humphrys talks about the Shostakovich Quartet Cycle in Bantry House
The Carducci Quartet will play the complete cycle over five concerts in Bantry House on the October Bank Holiday weekend, 24-26 October. For over a decade the Carducci has been playing these momentous fifteen quartets, composed over thirty-five years from the Stalinist Purges in the Thirties, to the Nazi invasion and the siege of Leningrad, the post-war crushing of artistic independence, the death of Stalin, the brief Thaw followed by the decades of the Cold War and the stifling bureaucratic rule whose sole aim was to crush dissent. In these brutal times great artists had to find a way to speak.
Twice in his life Shostakovich suffered a civil execution, in 1936 and 1948, when he flew too close to the sun and suddenly found his music banned and himself vilified. The natural end of both these campaigns should have been physical execution and indeed the expectation of violent death became the main theme of his music. It was also stamped forever on his face, the eyes of a pursued, wounded animal…in contrast to the officially lacquered lie with which the authorities covered their crimes.
He lived in a world where speaking truth to power was at best a ticket to the Gulag.
There is a story from 1956 about the Borodin Quartet playing his once-banned Fourth Quartet at a vodka-fuelled after-party in a restaurant to a select audience of the composer and a collection of notables including a high-up from the Ministry of Culture. With much drink taken the Quartet played at first with a peculiar, drunken rhythmical balance, from which it was dangerous to diverge treating the Scherzo like a street gang's song leading the audience including the composer to sing along (!) so by the time the subversive Jewish finale arrived the Quartet was holding nothing back. That music was followed by a long silence. The Ministry official had a frozen stare and his forehead was bathed in sweat: it was clearer than ever, to him and to all of us, why this music had been banned, and not very understandable why they had suddenly permitted it again.
intimate thoughts of a composer, who lived through one of the
most oppressive dictatorships of the Twentieth Century.
Another story goes that Shostakovich loved chandeliers fitted with real candles. He enjoyed preparing them : making sure each candle stood at a true vertical, setting a match to the wicks in advance and then blowing them out so they would be easier to relight when the big moment came. So perhaps he would approve our candlelit celebration of his fifteen great string quartets.
The Carducci Quartet will play the complete cycle of Shostakovich quartets in Bantry House on the October Bank Holiday weekend, 24-26 October - find out more here
