Piano Quintet (Shostakovich) Piano Quintet (Shostakovich) The Piano Quintet in G Minor, opus 57, by Dmitri Shostakovich is one of his best-known chamber works. Like most piano quintets, it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello). Shostakovich began work on the piece in the summer of 1940 and completed it on September 14. It was written for the Beethoven Quartet, as were most of his string quartets, and premiered by them with Shostakovich himself at the piano on November 23, 1940 at the Moscow Conservatory, to great success. In 1941, it was awarded the Stalin Prize. A typical
New World String Quartet members were: Curtis Macomber and Vahn Armstrong, violins; Robert Dan, viola; and Ross Harbaugh, cello. Members on recordings in the late 1980s and early 1990s included Curtis Macomber and Vahn Armstrong, violins; Benjamin Simon, viola; and Ross Harbaugh, cello. The quartet also recorded a Brahms piano quintet with Derek Han, piano. The quartet won the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation Chamber Music award in 1979. In 1980 the New World String Quartet became the first quartet-in-residence at Harvard University. The quartet was awarded a Grand Prix du Disque in 1991 for their recording of the string quartets of Debussy, Ravel, and