Shostakovich’s “Dresden” Quartet from 1960 scarcely needs an introduction. Its official dedication as a memorial to the victims of the 1945 Dresden fire bombing has long been supplanted by a focus on the obsessive use of Shostakovich’s own DSCH motif (D – Eb – C – B), plus its references to a convoy marching to Siberia from his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and the revolutionary song “Tortured by grievous unfreedom”, as well as other works.
0:04 -1st movement (Largo)
4:57 -2nd movement (Allegro Molto)
7:48 -3rd movement (Allegretto)
12:02 -4th movement (Largo)
17:25 -5th movement (Largo)
This performance by the Borodin Quartet is from a studio recording made in Moscow, with the players Rostislav Dubinsky, Yaroslav Alexandrov, Dmitri Shebalin and Valentin Berlinsky.
I am hugely grateful to olla-vogala for publishing this score initially, and I hope his version with, I think, the Emerson Quartet reappears on YouTube soon.
Here is a playlist of the complete Shostakovich quartets with score: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8hVc6VvPyKJKSK9hRLE3N4HcsMgs5tbp
And here my playlist of the Borodins playing all the Shostakovich quartets: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8hVc6VvPyKLAnTWkdfPdMmhw-TU3kMoR