String Quartet No. 3 in F Major

Shostakovich composed his String Quartet No. 3 in 1946, not long after the devastation of the Second World War, when the Soviet people had had to fight for their very existence. Yet, typical of Shostakovich, it plays upon and subverts expectations. Its bright F major start might initially suggest a celebration of the war’s end—albeit with intimations of darker emotions lurking beneath its apparently genial surface. However, as the work unfolds, it becomes clear that it is a prelude to a tragedy. The following “Moderato con moto” opens with cloddish viola arpeggios, suggesting something brutal in its simple-minded and mechanical motions, with even the movement’s subsequent more sensitive themes largely shackled to its metronomic beat. Next, an “Allegro non troppo” whose stamping chords foretell the brutal fury of the scherzo of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 (a work he was already sketching but would not complete until the 1950s). A dignified yet grief-stricken “Adagio” follows, with first violin as the eloquent chief mourner. This segues into the finale, led largely by the cello, who eventually introduces a more jaunty theme, taken up—without much conviction—by the first violin.