String Quartet No. 1 in C Major

Shostakovich’s magnificent cycle of 15 string quartets got off to a surprisingly modest start. After the trauma of the 1936 Pravda denunciation and the triumph of the Fifth Symphony’s premiere (1937), he started composing this work as a kind of relaxation, an exercise in quartet form. “Don’t expect to find any special depth in it,” he wrote, rather “childhood scenes, naive and bright moods associated with spring.” But creative minds can make important discoveries whilst at play, and in writing the First Quartet (1938) Shostakovich not only did valuable groundwork for future deeper explorations, he created a uniquely lovely piece in its own right: charming, tuneful, seemingly relaxed, but hinting at deeper things in the second movements folk-theme variations, and adding a nervy edge to wistfulness in the following scherzo. In the end, brightness seems to win out, but on the way, this “exercise” has glimpsed a wealth of possibilities.