THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE VOLUME IV ALSO WITH THE PACIFICA QUARTET ON CEDILLE RECORDS STRING QUARTETS BY SHOSTAKOVICH: QUARTETS NOS. 13-15 THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE VOL III CDR 90000 138 SCHNITTKE: QUARTET No. 3 “This Shostakovich cycle is turning out to be one of the AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES most riveting of recent years. . . . Pacifica’s Shostakovich cycle already is shaping up as definitive.” —BBC Music Magazine

THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE VOLUME II STRING QUARTETS BY THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE VOL II DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES SHOSTAKOVICH: QUARTETS NOS. 1-- 4 CDR 90000 130 PROKOFIEV: QUARTET NO. 2 “Having reached the halfway point, the Pacifica’s Shostakovich cycle already is shaping up as definitive, even in a field stocked with . . . formidable Russian contenders.” PACIFICA QUARTET —The Classical Review

SovietExpVol2_Mech.indd 1 12/9/11 10:41 AM THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE VOL I CDR 90000 127 “The excellent Pacifica Quartet . . . offers electrifying interpretations . . . The group conveys every shade of Shostakovich’s extreme emotional palette.” —The New York Times

MENDELSSOHN: THE COMPLETE STRING QUARTETS CDR 90000 082 “This box sets a new gold standard for performances of Mendelssohn’s string quartets.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch PACIFICA QUARTET

SovietExpVol4_MECH.indd 1 10/2/2013 2:58:04 PM Producer & Engineer Judith Sherman THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE VOLUME IV PACIFICA QUARTET Assistant Engineer & Digital Editing Bill Maylone Shostakovich Quartet No. 14 and (most of) 15 Editing James Ginsburg STRING QUARTETS BY SHOSTAKOVICH: QUARTETS NOS. 13-15 Editing Assistance Jeanne Velonis DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH SCHNITTKE: QUARTET NO. 3 Recorded Shostakovich Quartets Nos. 13 and 14: December 16–18, 2012; Shostakovich Quartet No. 15 and Schnittke Quartet No. 3: August 24–26, 2013 — Auer Hall, Indiana University AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES Bloomington DISC ONE Microphones Sonodore RCM-402 & DPA 4006-TL Front Cover Design Sue Cottrill Inside Booklet & Inlay Card Nancy Bieschke DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975) Front Cover Art Always on the guard of Homeland!,1973, by V. Chumakov String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat minor, Op. 138 1 Adagio —Doppio movimento —Tempo primo (19:15) available at www.sovietposters.ru String Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp major, Op. 142 (25:45) PUBLISHERS 2 I. Allegretto (8:41) Schnittke Sikorski — String Quartet No. 3, Op © 1983 (SIK6752) 3 II. Adagio (8:43) Shostakovich Sikorski — String Quartet No. 13, Op. 138 © 1970 (SIK2170); String Quartet No. 14, 4 III. Allegretto (8:18) Op. 142 © 1972 (SIK2175); String Quartet No. 15, Op. 144 © 1974 (SIK2204) TT: (45:12)

DISC TWO Cedille Records is a trademark of Cedille Chicago, NFP, a not-for-profit foundation devoted to promoting the finest Pacifica Quartet musicians and ensembles in the Chicago area. Cedille Chicago’s activities are supported in part by contributions and DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Simin Ganatra, violin grants from individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies including the Irving Harris Foundation, String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor, Op. 144 (36:10) Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin Kirkland & Ellis Foundation, MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, Negaunee Foundation, Sage Foundation, and 1 I. Elegy: Adagio (11:39) 2 II. Serenade: Adagio (5:49) Masumi Per Rostad, viola the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. 3 III. Intermezzo: Adagio (1:44) Brandon Vamos, cello 4 IV. Nocturne: Adagio (4:27) 5 V. Funeral March: Adagio molto (5:37) CONTRIBUTIONS TO CEDILLE CHICAGO, NFP MAY BE 6 VI. Epilogue: Adagio (6:52) MADE AT CEDILLERECORDS.ORG OR 773-989-2515. (1934–1998) String Quartet No. 3 (22:54) CEDILLE RECORDS® trademark of 7 I. Andante (6:14) Cedille Chicago, NFP 8 1205 W Balmoral Ave., Chicago IL 60640, USA II. Agitato (8:18) 773.989.2515 tel • 773.989.2517 fax 9 III. Pesante (8:20) CEDILLERECORDS.ORG CDR 90000 145 P & C 2013 Cedille Records TT: (59:16) All Rights Reserved. Made in U.S.A

3 Shostakovich Quartets 13, 14 & 15 These forced a daily awareness ...[a] subjectivity that forcibly personal style of playing in mind. Schnittke Quartet 3 that his remaining time was short, brings the extremes together The first of these solos roots the Notes by Gerard McBurney and made even the physical act of in the moment, fills the dense subsequent sound of the whole writing music on paper painful and polyphony with its tensions, quartet in the rich, somber world of The idea of Late Style has been much awkward. breaks it apart with the unisono, the viola’s lower strings. The second, pondered. In his celebrated essay, and disengages itself, leaving... Amazingly, these difficulties appear as though under the impact of the On Late Style: Music and Literature naked tone behind; that sets to have stimulated him creatively as musical and psychological traverse Against the Grain, literary theorist the mere phrase as a monument much as they held him back. Unable of the whole composition, ends by Edward Said, then approaching his to what has been, marking a to hold a pen for more than limited climbing towards the highest and own end, observed: subjectivity turned to stone... amounts of time, he seems (to judge most fragile sounds of which this The accepted notion is that age by the music itself) to have set about Caesuras... sudden discontinuities... most paradoxical of instruments is confers a spirit of reconciliation internalizing the mystical action moments of breaking away... capable. and serenity on late works, of composing with ever greater [when] the work is silent at the From earliest youth, Shostakovich often expressed in terms of a intensity. The imaginative result was instant when it is left behind, and had shown a fascination with the miraculous transfiguration of a language that, if not completely turns its emptiness outward... compositional possibilities of music reality.... But what of artistic distinct from that of his earlier referring to other music, whether lateness not as harmony and music, unquestionably stands at an Shostakovich —dedicated each of by quoting from his own or other resolution, but as intransigence, awkward and sometimes startling composers’ pieces, or by parodying difficulty and contradiction? his 11th through 14th quartets angle to it — a language indeed to the individual members of the different styles and ideas, sometimes What if age and ill health don’t often filled with “intransigence, angrily, sometimes comically or produce serenity at all? , with whom he difficulty and contradiction.” had worked closely for decades. The even affectionately. In the rarified Such thoughts come into sharp As we listen to these quartets, we 13th was his gift for the Beethovens’ world of his later music, however, focus when we turn our ears to might well be reminded of German violist, . Like its this old creative habit undergoes Shostakovich’s last three quartets. musicologist Theodor W. Adorno’s predecessors, it includes tributes to a subtle change. Intertextual Although the composer was not famous description of the main both the instrument and the artistry references, while still ubiquitous and especially old when he wrote this characteristics of late Beethoven (as of the dedicatee — in particular, recognizable, now become ethereal, music — only in his 60s — he was quoted by Said): beginning and ending with long elliptical, etiolated, and allusive. assailed with health problems. solos written with Borisovsky’s We hear this in the opening of the

4 5 13th Quartet, where three ideas are is a curious aspect of Shostakovich’s prancing, mocking, and marked The same ghostly tapping continues presented, one after another, each late style that, while he showed doppio movimento — is initiated into the slow final section of the fraught with shadowy suggestions of little interest in religion in his daily by a little rhythmic motif in the quartet, when the three themes of other worlds and each with its own life, the sound of religious music first violin. In the composer’s 14th the opening reappear but none quite distinctive character. gained increasing importance in his Symphony, completed a year earlier, as we heard them at the beginning. First comes that dedicatory viola compositions. this motif was used to set words by Each has been transfigured by the solo, a lamentation formed from a After another brief solo, from Guillaume Apollinaire conveying experience of the intervening dance 12-note row, although most listeners the first violin but echoing the a woman’s bitter reaction to the of death. will hear it rather as a series of viola’s opening, the second violin slaughter of the First World War: — interlocked descending chromatic introduces a third idea, also Khokhochu! Khokhochu! Shostakovich’s 14th Quartet scales, like sobs fading into the evocative of Russian Orthodox I laugh... laugh... at the beautiful completes his cycle of four distance. Shostakovich toyed with chanting but, more importantly loves cut down by death hommages to the Beethoven Quartet with a large-scale three- 12-note rows often in his later works, and strikingly, alluding to one of The restless texture of this central but he never treated them as true Shostakovich’s favorite works of movement work dedicated to the section of the quartet is also richly Quartet’s cellist, Sergei Shirinsky. rows in the manner of Schoenberg Russian music: Mussorgsky’s opera polyphonic. Shostakovich was one and his pupils. He instead preferred Boris Godunov. The reference is to From its first notes this piece of the contrapuntal masters of the establishes a quite different tone to use them, as he does here, as Boris’s famous death-scene, and the 20th century and here he finds a quarries for shorter motifs with haunting moment when the heart- from that of its predecessor. While whole variety of spidery and delicate the 13th Quartet (1970) prompts which to unify long paragraphs of broken Tsar tells his young son how ways to combine wraiths and echoes music, and also as a way of opening to govern Russia wisely once Boris comparisons to the 14th Symphony of his opening three ideas. He also of 1969, the 14th Quartet (1973) up the remotest tonal spaces to be has died. introduces new imagery, including explored in the music to come. presents parallels with the 15th Overall, the 13th Quartet takes the the hollow sound of the stick of the Symphony (1971). In particular, the To this opening lament the whole form of a single movement in the bow tapped against the rounded quartet’s first movement continues quartet responds, almost in the shape of an arch: a slow introduction underside of the body of the and explores further the childlike, manner of a church chorus answering leading to a quicker central section, instrument, like someone tapping playful quality of the opening the incantation of a precentor like a scherzo or dance of death, gently on the lid of a coffin (a rare movement of the 15th Symphony, or priest. Harmony, spacing, and and then a return to the opening instance of Shostakovich employing which the composer likened to a melody all suggest religious music. It slow music. The central section — an “extended technique”). “toyshop.”

6 7 Also as with the 15th Symphony, the journey from the opening key of guitar-like accompaniment from Druzhinin knew (it was an open 14th Quartet contains many echoes F-sharp major (one of the trickiest the other three instruments. The secret in ) that Shostakovich, of the music of Shostakovich’s for Western stringed instruments) melody unexpectedly transforms at this late period of his life, was own youth, some delightful, some through a whole series of itself into a swaying, off-center dreaming of writing an opera on painful. These revolve especially unexpected secondary keys (which waltz in a distorted 19th century Anton Chekhov’s short story, The around pieces that held special he makes feel even more remote style. Here the first violin joins the Black Monk. In that haunting tale, autobiographical significance forthan they really are) back to F-sharp soaring, swooning cello tune at the Braga’s melody is heard several him, such as his First Symphony major at the end. interval of a sixth below to create a times by the protagonist who, in his (1925) and the opera Lady Macbeth The central slow movement, by syrupy texture and deeply poignant suffering and despair, comes to view of the Mtsensk District (1932). contrast, offers one of Shostakovich’s harmonic color. it, in all its treacliness, as a memento (a reminder of the inevitability Take the jaunty opening tune for the starkest visions: a contorted solo line This memorable moment feels mori cello (the dedicatee’s instrument). for the unaccompanied first violin, strikingly like a quotation of a scrap of death), both sweet and terrifying. This is strikingly similar in style more like the painful recollection of of olden music, even though there The final movement begins with to some of the more mocking half-forgotten scraps of melody than never was an olden music quite more plucking: a numbed pizzicato passages from Lady Macbeth and anything we would normally call a like this. Violist Fyodor Druzhinin, tapping of what seem at first to be other theatre scores from the 1930s. tune. A while later, the cello takes up who joined the Beethoven Quartet random notes, once again hardly a How Shostakovich treats the tune in the same solo line, and the first violin in 1964 and played the firstmelody at all. This time, however, this quartet, however, is far different gives the impression of improvising performance of the 14th, recalled there’s a clue: the names of the from what he would have tried 40 counterpoint above it. This again a moment in rehearsal when the notes spell the letters: years earlier. Out of what seems a sounds more like an aggressive composer, referencing this episode, S-E-Re-E-G-A deliberately unpromising and trivial attack on the original concept asked the musicians, “How did you phrase, he builds not satire but one than anything resembling normal like my Italian bit?” a familiar form of Sergei, the first of the most delicate, unpredictably polyphony; one might describe it as name of the dedicatee. Druzhinin assumed the composer whimsical and subtle musical anti-counterpoint. was making an association between The music that follows starts out as structures of his final years. Filled with The central section of this movement this moment and a once-famous an urgent scherzo-finale, perhaps Adorno’s “sudden discontinuities” reinvents itself as a ghostly serenade, piece of cheap and popular Italian another dance of death as in the and “moments of breaking away,” beginning with a leering cello music from the 19th century, 13th Quartet. But, as so often it traces a labyrinthine harmonic melody supported by a plucking, Gaetano Braga’s Angel’s Serenade. with Shostakovich, the composer

8 9 pulls a trick. Quite suddenly and 15th Symphony, the music changes constructed to resonate to, and with the quotations and self- surprisingly, the music’s energy yet again, this time plunging us into therefore be kept in tune with, the references of the 14th, and then ebbs away and we hear the cello, an entirely unexpected world of so-called “simpler” keys — F, C, D, adds an additional element: a sense on its lowest string, make a second luminous harmonic simplicity — a G and the like. When a composer of near-amorous proximity to a reference to the same first name, different kind of music that sounds uses keys that force the players to range of familiar masterpieces by using one of the most famous as though it could have been written spend time with their fingers on the composers of the past. The great and poignant phrases from Lady a hundred years earlier. “black” keys (in piano parlance), he ones of the baroque and classical Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. It is can exploit this to give the music period hover over this composition the moment when, on their journey As the composition— of his quartets an aura of greater fragility and in a more striking way than almost to punishment in Siberia, the unfolded over nearly 40 years, vulnerability (Shostakovich’s musical anywhere else in Shostakovich’s stricken heroine, Katerina makes a starting with the First in C major idol, Gustav Mahler, was fond of this output (his final work, the Viola final, desperate attempt to win back of 1938, each addition to the effect). Sonata, Op. 147, with its quotations the affections of her feckless lover: cycle appeared in a different key. Shostakovich’s final quartet, the 15th of the “Moonlight Sonata” being the other obvious example), almost Serezha! O milyi moi! Shostakovich’s contemporaries of 1974, is a potent and deliberate Sergei! Oh, my dear one! report that he began to dream of a example of this. Not only is it in six as though he were saying farewell complete set of 24 quartets in all the to the music of the past he loved so This heartfelt appeal marks a crisis continuous movements, but every different keys. He did not live long movement is in the same extremely much. in the quartet’s structure. Where we enough to achieve such a result, of might have expected the fast music difficult key of E-flat minor and The unusual form itself seems to course, but one effect of his dream every movement is slow. So those point to some pretty remarkable to continue, we are instead dragged is that nearly all of his late quartets back into the painful bleakness of beautiful moments of fragility and models. The idea of six slow are in “remote” tonalities. Remote vulnerability are inevitably highly movements in succession suggests the slow movement (including a in that they are on the far end of return of the “Italian bit” toward audible; they’re never covered up the famous seven successive slow the circle of fifths from the cycle’s by fast playing or a shift into an movements of Haydn’s Seven Last the end). The result is to give this opening C major; and also remote second half of the 14th the illusion easier key. Words of Our Savior on the Cross; because these are keys that offer and something akin to the dramatic of an arch-shape reminiscent of the fascinating problems of pitch and There’s another fascinating aspect overall form of the 13th. But again of the 15th too, found in the way it structure of the Haydn is also intonation to string players. Violins, proposed by the (completely non- we are deceived. At almost the very violas, and cellos are traditionally draws together the 13th Quartet’s end, as with the conclusion of the religious and liturgical elements religious) titles Shostakovich gives

10 11 his movements: Elegy— Serenade the ancient funeral chant from the three notes—a distinctive trope masterpiece written 35 years —Intermezzo—Nocturne—Funeral same tradition. characteristic of certain 19th earlier and one of the greatest March— Epilogue. Clearly, we are The ascetic second movement, century Romantic composers —is achievements of his youth: the first being asked to imagine a mysterious reminiscent of the opening of the movement of his 6th Symphony. Serenade, begins with another hidden ceremony or story, haunted of Shostakovich’s 12-note rows, slow movement of the 14th Quartet, with elements of love and death. passed like a series of shrieks from and of Shostakovich’s use of the The next generation— of Soviet The idea of a series of seamlessly one instrument to another, and same musical image in the finale of composers after Shostakovich—a linked movements, and the answered by hollow strumming, his 15th Symphony. There, he uses fascinating group including Edison spareness of the slow opening like that of an out-of-tune guitar. it to create an eerie, even creepy Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred fugato, together with the Evidently, this serenader — an musical pun between the opening of Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, and Valentin remoteness of the key, also brings even more sinister example of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and the Silvestrov — are remarkable for to mind one of the greatest the serenader from the second melody from Glinka’s song setting the way they set about defining masterpieces of the entire string movement of the 14th Quartet — of the poem, “Dissuasion,” by the their own voices. They came to quartet repertory: Beethoven’s has a more than passing connection Russian Romantic poet Yevgeny maturity almost immediately by Op. 131 in C-sharp minor. And the to that old leering woodcut figure of Baratynsky: establishing themselves in sharp theme of the fugato, despite its a skeleton with an instrument in his Do not tempt me needlessly with stylistic opposition to Shostakovich. liturgical character, seems distinctly hands, singing beneath the window the return of tenderness... This was only natural. Coming to independence in the late 1950s reminiscent of Schubert’s Death and of a doomed maiden, not only as There are many such half-references the Maiden Quartet. described by Schubert (as we have — the period of relative cultural and allusions in this great final freedom known as the Khrushchev Liturgical echoes continue in the just been reminded) but also in quartet of Shostakovich; the music one of Shostakovich’s best-loved Thaw — these young men and Elegy with two more chantlike is astonishingly rich with them. women urgently needed to free themes. The first is close to the Russian works, Musorgsky’s Songs But perhaps the most important and Dances of Death. themselves from the artistic authority traditional Russian Orthodox Alleluia and most moving comes in the of their elders. Their instinct was that greets the Easter Resurrection. Halfway through the third very closing bars. This dying away to do that by looking outside the The second — played in pianissimo movement, Intermezzo, after a of music we recognize from the constricted world of Soviet music for two-octave unison by the second whirlwind cadenza, the first violin Quartet’s Funeral March fifthmodels and inspiration. They were violin and cello — recalls the famous launches without warning into a movement, is a transcription of the especially excited by composers Vechnaya pamyat’ (Eternal Memory), mysterious high melody. Its first final bars of another Shostakovich whose music was still forbidden

12 13 in the USSR at that time, including A first overt musical acknow- quartets: first, a descending pair Out of these three scraps of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, ledgement of Shostakovich came of 16th century-style cadences material, Schnittke fashions in his Webern, and post-war European when Schnittke marked the death the composer marks “Orlando di first movement a densely woven and American avantgardists such of the older composer in 1975 with Lasso — Stabat Mater,” although sound fabric combining and as Stockhausen, Boulez, Ligeti, and the touching Prelude in memoriam Schnittke extracts an essence recombining the three ideas so Cage. Dmitri Shostakovich for 2 violins. from Lassus’s great work rather that they transform and begin to With time, however, many of these From that moment on, echoes than quoting the original exactly. suggest a profusion of new ideas. younger composers ended up of Shostakovich begin to creep Next, the angular, chromatic main Schnittke seizes upon one of returning to Shostakovich in later more frequently into Schnittke’s theme of Beethoven’s Grosse these new ideas to establish music. Despite this, there is little Fuge, Op. 133, but again not years, sometimes even re-examining the main theme of the Agitato his style and ideas through the that sounds like Shostakovich in exactly as we hear it in Beethoven. central movement. It is a curious prism of their own compositional Schnittke’s 2nd Quartet of 1981. The Finally, growing directly out of and (typically for Schnittke) approaches. This was particularly piece is filled with religious imagery the Beethoven quotation, the paradoxical musical image that true of Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998). derived from early Russian church famous DSCH signature motif begins surprisingly like a minor music, but the effect is far from the of Shostakovich (D–E-flat– C– B key rondo theme from Mozart, Listening to Schnittke’s ground- chants found in Shostakovich’s late natural), but recast as a kind of breaking music from 1960s, one early Beethoven, or Schubert. It quartets. scream (with the notes always feels like we are leaping into yet would be hard put to identify any rising), very unlike the many Shostakovich influence, exceptWhen Schnittke composed his 3rd another period of the past. But Quartet two years later, however, occurrences of this 4-note image instead of developing this idea or perhaps for a certain kind of tragic in Shostakovich’s music. rhetoric that was very much part of all matters had clearly changed. This transforming it, Schnittke simply serious Soviet culture of that period. imposing work in three movements, Shostakovich is thus (albeit in repeats it over and over, while While Schnittke’s 1st Quartet of 1966 slow-fast-slow, immediately suggests a twisted and distorted form) aggressively interrupting it with does use 12-note rows, in parallel a Shostakovichian arch-structure placed right at the heart of harsh, expressionist shrieks and with Shostakovich’s concurrent (shades of the 13th and 14th Schnittke’s 3rd Quartet, alongside cries. Throughout this uproar, fascination with this musical idea, quartets). It begins with three Beethoven and Lassus (a master Schnittke keeps driving the music the younger man employs his rows quasi-quotations, an almost precise of the European Renaissance). back toward the original Lassus, in a manner more like the 12-note parallel with the three stylistic Clearly, some sort of statement is Beethoven, and Shostakovich. music of Schoenberg or Berg than references at the beginning of being made. that of Shostakovich. Shostakovich’s 13th and 15th

14 15 Schnittke’s third and final movement Noted scholar of Russian and Soviet PACIFICA QUARTET Two. In 2006, Pacifica was awarded also contains parallels with music, Gerard McBurney is Artistic Recognized for its virtuosity, a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Shostakovich. It begins as a funeral Programming Advisor for the Chicago exuberant performance style, and Grant, becoming only the second march, with the same four-square Symphony Orchestra and Creative often-daring repertory choices, chamber ensemble so honored in the dotted rhythm Shostakovich uses Director of its acclaimed Beyond the over the past two decades the Grant’s long history. Also in 2006, the for the 15th Quartet’s march. But Score Series. Pacifica Quartet has gained inter- Quartet was featured on the cover of Schnittke changes the sense of national stature as one of the finest Gramophone and heralded as one of this association by smearing the chamber ensembles performing “five new quartets you should know harmonies so that his march recalls today. The Pacifica tours extensively about,” the only American quartet not the nobility of Shostakovich’s throughout the United States, to make the list. In 2009, the Quartet piece, but rather the heavy vulgarity Europe, Asia, and Australia, perform- was named “Ensemble of the Year” of the official Soviet funeral march ing regularly in the world’s major by Musical America. (employed at the innumerable rituals concert halls. Named the quartet- The Pacifica Quartet has carved a of mourning and state funerals that in-residence at Indiana University’s niche for itself as the preeminent made up so much of the liturgy of Jacob School of Music in March interpreter of string quartet cycles, Soviet public life). 2012, the Pacifica was also quartet- harnessing the group’s singular Out of this darkness and bitterness, in-residence at the Metropolitan focus and incredible stamina to the original three ideas from the Museum of Art (2009– 2012) — a portray each composer’s evolution, beginning — Lassus, Beethoven, position previously held only by often over the course of just a few and DSCH — begin to reappear, but the Guarneri String Quartet — and days. Having given highly acclaimed now fragile and fading back into the received the 2009 Grammy Award for performances of the complete distance. Best Chamber Music Performance. Elliott Carter cycle in San Francisco, Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet New York, Chicago, and Houston; quickly won chamber music’s top the Mendelssohn cycle in Napa, competitions, including the 1998 Australia, New York, and Pittsburgh; Naumburg Chamber Music Award. and the Beethoven cycle in New York, In 2002, the ensemble was honored Denver, St. Paul, Chicago, Napa, with Chamber Music America’s and Tokyo (in an unprecedented Cleveland Quartet Award and the presentation of five concerts in three appointment to Lincoln Center’s CMS days at Suntory Hall), the Quartet 16 17 presented the monumental Shosta- String Quartets and Declarations: kovich cycle in Chicago and New York Music Between the Wars. Upcoming during the 2010–2011 season, and in recording projects include Leo Montreal and at London’s Wigmore Ornstein’s rarely-heard piano quintet Hall in the 2011–2012 season. The with Marc-André Hamelin for Quartet has been widely praised for Hyperion and the Brahms and Mozart these cycles, with critics calling the clarinet quintets with Metropolitan concerts “brilliant,” “astonishing,” Opera Orchestra Principal Clarinetist “gripping,” and “breathtaking.” Anthony McGill for Cedille. An ardent advocate of contemporary The members of the Pacifica Quartet music, the Pacifica Quartet com- live in Bloomington, Indiana, where missions and performs many new they serve as quartet-in-residence works, including those by Keeril and full-time faculty members at the Makan and Shulamit Ran to be Jacobs School of Music. Prior to that premiered during the 2013–2014 appointment, the Quartet was on and 2014–2015 seasons. In 2008, the faculty of the University of Illinois the Quartet released its Grammy at Champaign-Urbana from 2003 Award-winning recording of Carter’s to 2012. The Pacifica Quartet also Quartets Nos. 1 and 5 on the Naxos serves as resident performing artist label; the 2009 release of Quartets at the University of Chicago. Nos. 2, 3, and 4 completed the two- The Pacifica Quartet is endorsed by CD set. With this album on Cedille D’Addario and proudly uses their Records, the Pacifica completes its strings. four-volume traversal of the entire Shostakovich cycle, combined with other Soviet-era quartets. The Pacifica’s For more information visit pacificaquartet.com Pacifica Quartet other recordings for Cedille Records Simin Ganatra, violin / Brandon Vamos, cello / Masumi Per Rostad, viola / Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin include Mendelssohn: The Complete Photo by Anthony Parmelee

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