Kissin / Shostakovich: Quartett
Kissin / Shostakovich: Quartett
Format: CD
Wanting to order from us over the holiday period but need some more information. We are here to help! Please see our Christmas Shipping page for more information.
On average, orders containing available-to-ship items are processed and dispatched within 1-2 business days, although this is not guaranteed.
Orders containing preorder items will ship as 1 fulfillment once all items in the order are available to ship.
Please note, Tower Records Merchandise and Exclusives are dispatched separately. On average, these items take 3-4 business days to dispatch, although this is not guaranteed.
The estimated shipping times that are displayed at checkout are from the point of dispatch.
See our shipping policy for more information.
We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item(s) to make a return.
For orders created between November 20th 2024 and December 31st 2024, we have extended our normal return period. For orders made between this period, customers have up to 60 days from the receipt of goods to return an item. Please see our Christmas Returns page for more information.
To be eligible for a return of an unwanted item, your item must be in the same condition that you received it and in its original packaging.
In the unfortunate situation that a product is damaged/faulty/incorrect, let us know and we will endeavor to correct any issue as soon as possible.
Please see our refund policy for more information.
Artist: Kissin / Shostakovich
Label: Nimbus Records
Product Type: COMPACT DISCS
UPC: 710357597022
Genre: Classical
Shostakovich composed his String Quartet No. 2 in A major Op. 68 in just nineteen days during the summer of 1944 at a 'House of Rest and Creativity' in Ivanovo. It's allusions to Russian folk music made it a loyal response to the 'Great Patriotic War', but it's incorporation of style elements of the sacred and klezmer music of Eastern European Jewry, historically oppressed within Russia and Eastern Europe, took it's implications further afield. By including aspects of Jewish style, he may have desired to express his sympathy for the persecuted Jewish people, especially when news broke in 1944 of the atrocities carried out at the Treblinka concentration camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during WWII. While staying in Batumi, Georgia in late October/early November 1931, he adapted in one evening two short movements from earlier works as a gift to the Jean Vuillaume Quartet. His beautiful Elegy for string quartet is derived from Katerina Ismailova's aria 'The foal runs after the filly' in Act I, Scene 3 of Lady MacBeth, which he completed in it's original version in 1932. The Polka derives from Shostakovich's first ballet The Golden Age Op. 22 (1929-30), which dramatizes the visit of a Soviet football team to a decadent Western European city. The footballers are subjected to various indignities, including imprisonment, but they are eventually freed when the working classes revolt against their bourgeois rulers and the ballet ends with a dance of solidarity between the footballers and the workers. Kissin's String Quartet is a fitting companion to Shostakovich's works on this disc, not least because both composers' musical language has much in common. The work is modernist, starkly constructed but deeply communicative and it comprises an eclectic mixture of styles that appertain to Kissin's life and career.
Tracks:
