While The Shostakovich String Quartet was not well known outside the former Warsaw Pact and made few commercial recordings, they were one of the elite quartets of the Soviet Union and worked closely with composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who admired their playing. The admiration was mutual, so much so that composer agreed to the ensemble adopting his name. During a little over the last decade of the Soviet era, the ensemble recorded all of the composer’s quartets at Moscow Radio for broadcast, and upon their initial commercial release in 2004, Gramophone praised the quartet’s “special intensity to this repertoire, as well as an effortless technical address, and a tonal blend which gives their recordings a strong claim on the collectors allegiance.” This new remastering in HD sound reveals these arguably definitive recordings in their best sound yet.
Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets
