Enesco String Quartet Returns From Winter Term in the Far North Will Perform on Sunday, February 13, 6:30 P.M. in Kulas Recital Hall
	RELATED back to the main story		The Program The Mozart String Quartet in C Major, K. 465 is described in Enesco's original program notes as "a tightly composed masterpiece...The 22-bar introduction, from which the quartet gets its name "Dissonant," is a harmonic meditation that foreshadows much of the rest of the quartet. The repeated notes in the cello, as well as the layering of a simple repeated motive in the upper-voices, foreshadows the second movement where the cello line is embellished and the upper voices continue to layer and expand the harmony. The use of accented notes dying away and then being recalled in other voices at the end of the introduction mirrors the simple motive call-and-response between the cello and violin in the second movement. The C minor sonority in the intro also foreshadows the key of the melodramatic trio section of the third movement. The quartet ends with a playful allegro. "The Smetana (Quartet in E minor, "From my Life") was written over the course of three months in 1876. Two years after going completely deaf and sinking into mental illness and depression, Smetana wrote that he intended for the quartet to "paint a tone picture of my life." The quartet is a reminiscence of the triumphs, loves, and happiness of Smetana's youth contrasted with his concurrent period of intense depression and loneliness. "Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor was written in July of 1960 following a visit by Shostakovich to the bombed ruins of the city of Dresden. It is with these images of the death and destruction of a major cultural center that he inscribed the Quartet "To the Memory of the Victims of Fascism and War." Having recently been re-instated into the good graces of the Soviet government but perceived to be an obedient Communist puppet, Shostakovich made this his most explicit, personal and poignant criticism of the Soviet system."
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