Shostakovich had his first run-in with Stalin in 1936, when the young composer was blasted for producing “Muddle Instead of Music,” to quote the title of a scathing editorial. Stalin’s tight control over Soviet artists relaxed slightly during World War II, and Shostakovich bounced back with his Seventh Symphony—a tribute to the besieged city of Leningrad—but the risks intensified again after the war. Given the criticism Shostakovich faced in 1945 for his Ninth Symphony, a charming little work that was a far cry from the expected ode to victory, he knew to tread carefully. He completed only one composition in 1946, the String Quartet No. 3 written for the Beethoven Quartet, his longtime collaborators who premiered all but the first and last of his 15 string quartets. His caution, it turned out, was well founded: he was among the composers singled out for condemnation in 1948, a very dangerous time to be on the wrong side of Stalin.

For the 1946 premiere, Shostakovich provided the Third Quartet with subtitles for each movement corresponding to the arc of war, starting with “Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm” to characterize the first movement. Shostakovich soon disavowed the subtitles, and it seems likely that they only existed to insulate the quartet from criticism of its ideological stance (or lack thereof). In reality, this quartet contains many layers of nuanced meaning that transcend any implied narrative. That description of “Blithe ignorance” for the first movement may have provided cover for music that is unabashedly playful, but it hardly captures the thrust of this finely wrought movement in the Classical tradition of Haydn and Beethoven (with traces of Bach, as heard in the formal counterpoint).

The next movement, at a tempo marked Moderato con moto, originally sported the label, “Rumblings of unrest and anticipation.” This unsettled music in a forward-leaning, three-beat meter substitutes for a customary slow movement. The following section is even more assertive, taking the form of a hard-charging march that came with the subtitle, “Forces of war unleashed.” The work’s only slow movement is the brief Adagio (“In memory of the dead”) that functions as a somber introduction to the finale. This fifth movement is the longest and most hermetic portion of the work, and it resonates far beyond Shostakovich’s supposed war narrative as it asks “The eternal question: Why? And for what?”

Aaron Grad ©2015

When the 21-year-old Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, Mozart had been dead less than a year, and Haydn — with whom Beethoven studied briefly — was in his prime. Under their long shadows, Beethoven spent his first years in Vienna mastering the “Classical” style, meanwhile earning a reputation as the city’s ranking keyboard virtuoso. If any one day marked his arrival as a composer of note, it must have been April 2, 1800, when he produced his first benefit concert at Vienna’s Burgtheater, the same venue where Mozart had presented highly successful concerts of his own in the 1780s. Besides leading an orchestra in a Mozart symphony and excerpts from Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, Beethoven performed one of his own piano concertos, and he debuted both the Symphony No. 1 and the Septet in E-flat, which stole the show.

In the spirit of Mozart’s serenades, the Septet was a musical confection with no higher aim than to entertain and delight its audience. (Well, it may have had one other aim: Beethoven was trying to gain favor with the work’s dedicatee, Empress Maria Theresa, who thought highly enough of the young composer that she recommended him a year later for an important ballet project, The Creatures of Prometheus.) In later years, Beethoven would back away from the success of his Septet, which remained one of his most popular works in his lifetime and which spawned numerous adaptations, including Beethoven’s own reduction for clarinet, cello and piano.

It would be wrong to discount the innovations that flow under the cheerful surface of the Septet, particularly in the novel use of a mixed ensemble of strings and winds. Just as Beethoven’s First Symphony attracted attention for emancipating the woodwinds from a supporting role, the Septet assembled the clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and bass as a band of equals. The clarinet shares melodic duties with the violin, and the omission of a second violin opens sonic space for the accompanying textures of the horn and bassoon. The Allegro con brio body of the first movement makes the most of the sonic range, setting up contrasts among the elegance of a string trio, the breeziness of a wind trio and the full force of the miniature orchestra. In the slow movement that follows, some of the most sublime movements are those that cut against the instrumental typecasting, as when the bassoon and cello each climb into their upper ranges to deliver poignant lines.

The third movement, a Minuet, reuses a theme from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in G, Opus 49, No. 2 (completed in 1796, its high opus number notwithstanding). For the fourth movement, the theme-and-variations structure invites myriad instrumental combinations, including spare textures for string duo and trio in the first variation and bare duets for clarinet and bassoon in the third.

In the quick Scherzo, the main motive takes its shape from the characteristic intervals of horn calls. The finale, in a bit of a twist, enters with a slow introduction, set in the parallel minor key. The Presto tempo soon brushes away that drama and tension, and the sprint to a buoyant conclusion only halts momentarily for a violin cadenza.

Aaron Grad ©2021