Shostakovich in St. Paul

St. Paul, Minn. — The Takacs Quartet made their Schubert Club debut last month with a mournful but profound rendition of Shostakovich Quartet No. 11. Listen online.

Shostakovich wrote his cinemagraphic 11th quartet in memory of a close friend and violinist who had played a major role in premiering many of his quartets, Vasili Shirinsky of the Beethoven Quartet.

The piece sounds like a dramatic lament from the outset with the violin taking the role of narrator. Performed without break, we seem to move from scene to scene in ever-more passionate gestures.

With almost tragi-comic proportions, the music comments on political futility and gives us a sense that one's life is passing before our eyes.

Listen to this wonderfully chilling performance by the Takacs Quartet from their Schubert Club debut concert at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in downtown St. Paul.

Guests

• Takacs Quartet: Based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, the Takacs Quartet performs 90 concerts a year worldwide, throughout Europe as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. The Quartet's award-winning recordings include the complete Beethoven Cycle on the Decca label. The quartet is known for innovative programming. In 2007 it performed, with Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Everyman" in Carnegie Hall, inspired by the Philip Roth novel. The Quartet's commitment to teaching is enhanced by summer residencies at the Aspen Festival and at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara. The Takacs is a Visiting Quartet at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.