The Soviet Union in the 1970s was characterised by social, political and economic stagnation – or so the story goes.
Dmitri Shostakovich, the country’s pre-eminent composer, completed his fifteenth and final string quartet in 1974, the year before he died.
The extent to which his music was a commentary on his life and times is still a matter of debate, but the work’s six movements, all slow and all in E flat minor, constitute a study of stillness lasting around 35 minutes. However, their bare textures and static harmonies belie a sense of disquiet which pervaded the world around Shostakovich and make it difficult not to hear the quartet as a reflection on his own impending death.