CAMERON HILL guest violin
WILMA SMITH violin
HELEN IRELAND viola
ZOE KNIGHTON cello

AGATHA YIM, POLYPHONIC PICTURES filming and editing

THOMAS GRUBB, MANO MUSICA sound engineering, editing and mastering

Filmed October 2023 at Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank

This project was made possible through support from the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne, and the Australian Government through Creative Australia.

CAMERON HILL
Guest Violinist

Cameron Hill is an Australian violinist who appears as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. He studied in Melbourne with Cathryn Bills, William Hennessy and Alice Waten, and in Vienna with Dora Schwarzberg and Boris Kuschnir. He has performed as a concerto soloist with many Australian orchestras, including the MSO, ASO, QSO, TSO, CSO and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. Cameron has also had success in major competitions, winning both the 2006 ABC Young Performer of the Year, and the 2005 Dorcas McClean National Violin Competition.

His love of chamber music has seen him perform various works with Pinchas Zukerman and Emmanuel Pahud. He was the founding leader of the Hamer Quartet, appeared as leader of the Flinders Quartet, and has toured Europe with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. During 2014, Cameron appeared as guest Concertmaster of the MSO for several months, and in 2015, toured and performed as guest leader of the Australian String Quartet. He is currently the Associate Concertmaster of the ASO.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH 1906-1975

String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (composed 1960)

I. Largo
II. Allegro molto
III. Allegretto
IV. Largo
V. Largo

A few years before his death, Shostakovich is quoted as saying: “You ask if I would have been different without Party Guidance? … Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the fourth symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas more openly instead of resorting to camouflage. I would have written more pure music.”

Living under Stalin in the middle of the twentieth century in an oppressive regime which curtailed individuality and creativity, this “pure music” could be explored in his fifteen string quartets as they were far less publicly profiled than his other compositions. Wendy Lesser wrote a riveting book (“Music for Silenced Voices”) on his fifteen string quartets, and she suggests: “If the best of Shostakovich’s symphonies are comparable to a full scale theatrical production of King Lear, the quartets are much more like Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

The eighth string quartet, written in 1960, is in five movements and is played without a break. It opens with Shostakovich’s musical signature using the initials DSCH, which comes from the German transliteration of his name (Dmitri SCHostakovich). In musical notation, these letters spell a four-note musical motive: D (D); E-flat (S); C (C); B (H).

This motif is transformed from primary material into accompaniment, ostinatos, and even a bizarre and macabre waltz before coming back tragically in the finale. The other identifiably Shostakovich motif is the three stabbing chords which occur in a number of his compositions.

Shostakovich wrote this quartet in just three days while he was procrastinating from writing a film score on the bombing of Dresden. He wrote to his friend, Glikman:

“As hard as I tried to rough out the film scores which I am supposed to be doing, I still haven’t managed to get anywhere. Instead I wrote this ideologically flawed string quartet which is of no use to anybody. I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself. The title page could carry the dedication: To the memory of the composer of this quartet.

The themes from my own work are as follows: from the first symphony, the eighth symphony, the second piano trio, the cello concerto and Lady Macbeth. There are hints of Wagner and Tchaikovsky. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that there is something else of mine as well, from the tenth symphony. Quite a nice little hodge podge really. It is a pseudo-tragic quartet, so much so that while I was composing it I shed the same amount of tears as I would have to pee after half-a-dozen beers. When I got home, I tried a couple of times to play it through, but always ended up in tears. This was of course a response not so much to the pseudo tragedy as to my own wonder at its superlative unity of form. But here you may detect a touch of self glorification, which no doubt will soon pass and leave in its place the usual self-critical hangover.”

Cellist of the Borodin Quartet, Valentin Berlinsky, remembers playing the work to him. Shostakovich apparently listened in silence and then left the room without saying a word. He didn’t come back. The quartet eventually packed up their instruments and left. The next day he rang up and said “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t face anybody. I have no corrections to make, just play it the way you did.”