Performed by Toledo Symphony Chamber Musicians on November 2, 2025

Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57 
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) 

Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich is most easily recognized as a giant in twentieth-century music because of his contributions to the symphonic genre, but he was also prolific in other genres, not the least of which is chamber music. Furthermore, what we might imagine of his life and work is wrapped up tightly in his relationship with the Soviet government and how it affected him. Author Josiah Fisk writes, “To an extraordinary extent the story of Shostakovich’s life is the story of his interactions with the Soviet government, which recognized him as one of the country’s greatest artists but feared and mistrusted his independence of mind. He could never be certain how his music would be viewed by the authorities, or what humiliations and punishments might lie in store for him. At the same time, he responded to official pressures with either a sullen indifference or a strictly superficial compliance, inwardly preserving a spirit of resistance. It is clear that Shostakovich’s life and therefore his music was shaped and influenced by these circumstances.” 

Shostakovich completed his Piano Quintet in 1940 while he was teaching composition at the Leningrad Conservatory. The Soviet Union was on the brink of war at the time, but though tensions were running high, Shostakovich had enjoyed some recent successes with his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and his First String Quartet.  

In his book, About Himself and His Times (published posthumously), Shostakovich writes, “After [the Fifth Symphony and subsequent return to the cinema with the music for the film The Man with a Gun] I wrote my First String Quartet. I began it with no particular thoughts or feelings, and thought that nothing would come of it. For the quartet is one of the most difficult musical genres. But soon the work took a proper hold of me. It turned out to be gay, jolly and lyrical, and I entitled it the ‘Springtime’ Quartet. I was very pleased with the splendid performance of the work by the Beethoven Quartet, who were also excellent first interpreters of my next chamber work, my Piano Quintet.” 

Some sources suggest that the Piano Quintet was requested by the Beethoven Quartet during rehearsals for the First String Quartet so that Shostakovich could join them on stage. Shostakovich reportedly responded, “I will write a quintet immediately and will definitely play it with you!” 

Shostakovich later wrote, “I spent the whole summer [of 1940] writing my Piano Quintet. The day before yesterday members of the music section of the Stalin Prize Committee listened to it at the Composers’ Club in Moscow.” This first unofficial performance led to Shostakovich being awarded the highly prestigious Stalin (State) Prize, and the Quintet was received very warmly by an audience of musicians and critics. A popular anecdote describes the applause as so enthusiastic that the group immediately played the entire piece again as an encore.  

Shostakovich undertook some small edits to the score after this initial performance, and the official premiere was a month later at the Moscow Conservatory, as part of a Soviet Music Festival.  

Writer and historian Marietta Shaginyan attended the performance and responded: “Shostakovich’s quintet is a work of genius in the full sense of the word: it has such power of artistic generalisation that it fully expresses a whole age, that it demonstrates, like a cup filled to the brim, the combined historic efforts and energy of millions of people, that it speaks of everyone. When the magnificent Beethoven Quartet ... solemnly raised their bows, when Shostakovich – a young man yet, pale, not tall, his face with something childlike about it, possessed by music, frail and delicate like Mozart or Chopin – when he placed his fingers on the keys and the first clear ... notes of the prelude scattered through the total silence, the whole hall seemed to lean forward to listen, to drink in and receive, afraid of missing a single drop, like the parched earth under a downpour of rain. I have seen and heard many fine things in my days, but it is hard to remember anything to compare with what I experienced that evening.” 

Shostakovich continued to perform the Quintet with various groups, as well as to teach it to younger musicians at the Conservatory. Glazunov Quartet cellist D. Y. Mogilevsky also points out that Shostakovich’s continued involvement in rehearsals as a performer rather than an observing composer may have influenced him to make more ongoing changes than he otherwise would have. A student who later performed the work recalled, “In the Prelude, [Shostakovich] asked us not to make a ritenuto, despite it being marked in the score. ‘But a ritenuto is written here,’ we exclaimed. He came up to us very nervously, took out a pen and crossed out the marking in every part.”  

Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet is one of his most important prewar works, and it is set apart emotionally from his other works. Musicologist Hugh Macdonald writes, “There’s no satire here, no angst, and no trace of the introversion found in much of his late music. One is tempted to describe it as a happy work, if anything by Shostakovich can be so described. Its tonality ... is secure, and the processes are transparent.... When the fifth and last movement glides to its charming close we can easily imagine that behind those inscrutable Soviet glasses the composer is actually smiling.”  

String Quintet in C major, D. 956, Op. posth. 163 
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) 

Franz Schubert completed his String Quintet in 1828, barely two months before his death, and it is arguably one of his most impressive contributions to the repertoire. While it’s likely that the Quintet was at least partly inspired by quintets by Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert chose a slightly different instrumentation than either of theirs. Instead of adding a second viola as his predecessors had done, for example, he added a second cello, adding depth and a darker texture. Annotator James Nicholas adds that this decision “permits [Schubert] to explore the string trio texture in the middle of the ensemble, while making embellishments with the ‘bookend’ combination of first violin and second cello at the extremes of the quartet range.” 

The year leading up to his death was one of the most prolific in Schubert’s career. Pianist Alfred Brendel calls this year “a tremendous development” for both Schubert and classical music. Poet Franz Grillparzer wrote for Schubert’s memorial: “The art of music has here buried a rich possession but far fairer hopes.” 

Schubert had not been in the best of health for several years, suffering from a venereal disease, intermittent nausea, and intense headaches, but there was apparently nothing out of the ordinary in that last year that warned him that his death was imminent. His career was going very well – his works were in high demand with audiences and publishers alike – and his social calendar was full. Nevertheless, it’s hard to ignore the sense, in hindsight, that he was racing to complete so many new pieces because his time was short. 

A few days after completing the Quintet, Schubert accompanied his brother Ferdinand on a fifty-mile pilgrimage (on foot!) to see Haydn’s grave. On their return, he continued composing, until, according to his brother, he fell ill. “After this, he ate and drank hardly anything.” He passed away weeks later, only a few months shy of his thirty-second birthday. 

Schubert’s String Quintet is most well-known for its slow movement and the first movement’s lovely cello duet. Interestingly, these two examples represent some of the only tranquil points in the piece. Brendel notes that the piece as a whole has a “dark core,” and even the C-major opening – normally a carefree tonality – is disturbed by dissonant hints of what’s to come. Nicholas describes this as an “exploration of … hitherto unprobed spiritual states or worlds.” He goes on to write about the irony behind Schubert’s key choice: “a vehicle for the darkest as well as for the most optimistic statements … it is the dark side of C major, or rather, the darkness behind the façade of ‘bright’ C major, which stamps this work indelibly and renders its character so amazingly, artfully ambiguous.” 

Schubert follows the traditional overall structure of fast-slow-dance-fast. The first movement is marked Allegro ma non troppo and opens slowly, not unlike one of Beethoven’s or Haydn’s slow and stately symphonic introductions. But that slow beginning quickly gives way to a spritely main theme. 

The Adagio begins gently, with the sweetest melody stretched over held chords, anchored with resonant pizzicato in the cello. Schubert interrupts this heavenly texture with a far more forceful and anxious section, which annotator Christopher Symons calls “turbulent and highly inflected. It is through the miraculous scoring of the instruments that Schubert seems able to conjure this uniquely mysterious atmosphere – stasis and movement, physical and spiritual.” 

The third movement is a scherzo and is marked presto; Schubert, as he was so fond of doing, placed the contrasting andante sostenuto in the center of the movement in place of the usual trio. The Allegretto that follows opens in C minor but moves quite quickly into the major. Annotator Jonathan Blumhofer writes of the finale: “[It] is filled with jaunty, folkish rhythms and is, perhaps, the most explicitly Beethoven-influenced movement of the Quintet. [Thematic material] of the opening movement returns here in force, though, overall, this movement employs [it] in more subtle ways…. Toward the end, the tempo increases … as though the music is being consumed by frenzy.”