An eminent violist and conductor, Rudolf Barshai was responsible for five transcriptions of Shostakovich's String Quartets and this recording completes the sequence with the Third...

An eminent violist and conductor, Rudolf Barshai was responsible for five transcriptions of Shostakovich's String Quartets and this recording completes the sequence with the Third and Tenth (Volume 1 is on 8573466). Barshai recast String Quartet No. 3 as a chamber symphony for strings and woodwind, the latter adding a sense of foreboding to the texture and engaging in whimsical dialogues during a work full of terseness and piercing power. Fashioning a Symphony for Strings from the Tenth Quartet soon after its premiere, Barshai graphically charts its movement from innocence lost and then tentatively regained.