What Shostakovich sounds like at half speed
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
… The eighth quartet opens at a sepulchral pace, so slow here that it could only be either inept or perverse. As the performance unfolds it becomes apparent that the slowness is intended as protest, both as a reflection of the composer’s feelings and perhaps as a response to COVID constraints. Shostakovich confided in 1960 that he was writing the eighth quartet as his own obituary since no-one else would remember him after death. …
It’s a five-star cracker.
Read on here.
And here.
So slow, even the viola players can sight read it.
Sight-reading and viola players is a contradiction in terms (yes, I am a viola player!!)
Fred isn’t twice as slow. He is half-fast.