Two Pieces for String Octet, Op.11

The string octet is such a difficult medium - neither string orchestra nor chamber ensemble but somewhere in between - that it takes an inexperienced composer, like Mendelssohn at the age of sixteen or Shostakovich at the age of eighteen, to get away with it. Several other composers have tried their luck in the meantime but Mendelssohn’s Octet in F and Shostakovich’s Two Pieces, Op.11, are the only works of their kind to retain a regular place in the repertoire. Their nearest rival is the Octet, Op.7, written by the nineteen-year-old George Enescu in 1900.

While Mendelssohn and Shostakovich were not so inexperienced that they were unaware of the problems, they both had the teenage confidence that they could solve them. Mendelssohn approached the ensemble by treating it, basically though not exclusively, as a small orchestra. Shostakovich, on the other hand, set out to write genuine chamber music in eight distinct parts - a Prelude and, as he originally intended, a Fugue. Perhaps he found the fugal writing too difficult. But the Two Pieces that were first performed in 1925, shortly before the First Symphony, are no less a virtuoso achievement for having a Scherzo instead of a Fugue. The Prelude combines dramatic baroque gestures with elegiac melody in the outer sections and a quicker, more playful middle section. The Scherzo is a brilliantly entertaining, daringly scored study in the grotesque. The two together are an unmistakable indication of the young composer’s extraordinary potential.