Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 8

- Composer: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September 1906 -- 9 August 1975) - Performers: St. Lawrence String Quartet - Year of recording: 2006 String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110, written in 1960. 00:00 - I. Largo 05:36 - II. Allegro molto 08:18 - III. Allegretto 12:39 - IV. Largo 18:36 - V. Largo The String Quartet No. 8 is a complex, melancholy work written while Shostakovich was visiting Dresden, Germany, in 1960, where he was to provide music for the film Five Days-Five Nights. There, amid the rubble still visible from the Allied bombings during World War II, he was inspired to composed this quartet in remembrance of the victims of both Hitler and Stalin. The work is cast in five continuous movements and contains numerous thematic references to other works by Shostakovich. - The first movement, marked Largo, opens with the now famous motto theme derived from the composer's initials, DSCH (given in its German equivalents as D, E flat, C, and B n