Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Major: Klezmer Strains
Dmitri Shostakovich composed his String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 over the course of 19 days in September of 1944. He had just completed the haunting Second Piano Trio, and (a year earlier) the Eighth Symphony. While the Second World War still raged, the tide had turned, and a Soviet victory over the Nazis was all but assured. Shostakovich found refuge at a “house of rest and creativity,” a …