Two Pieces for String Quartet Op.30b

Shostakovich’s first string quartet score was written seven or eight years before his First String Quartet. Dedicated to the J.Vuillaume Quartet in 1931, the Two Pieces disappeared from view and were rediscovered only in 1985. Although they were found to contain nothing new in one sense - the Elegy is clearly a transcription of Katerina’s aria at the end of the first act of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the Polka an arrangement of a dance from the Golden Age ballet - they were a revelation in another sense. The Elegy is so beautifully written for the medium that, in that respect, it surpasses anything in the First Quartet and, indeed, anticipates the Romance of the Second Quartet of 1944. In grotesque contrast, the companion piece is a brilliant study in the uncouth and at the same time one of the most entertaining examples of the twentieth century polka - alongside the one in Walton’s Façade and Stravinsky’s Circus Polka for a Young Elephant.