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
String Quintet in E major, Op. 11, No. 5 (Boccherini) the viola and celli have eighth note pizzicato. The second violin, on the other hand, has quick sixteenth note slurs which contain many string crossings. As Elisabeth Le Guin puts it in "Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology", “The second violinist has no time for "galanterie"; he must concentrate on keeping the constant string crossings reasonable even through the length of the bow”. The arrangements of this quintet, especially of the minuet, are extremely numerous. The entire piece was arranged for a double viola quintet in the 18th century. A 19th century transcription of the minuet for the organ