String Quartet No. 2 (Shostakovich)

Structure#

The work has four movements: Playing time is approximately 35 minutes, one minute shorter than his longest, String Quartet No. 15. The overture that the work begins with is in sonata form, traditional for the first movement of such a work. The music is strong, forceful, and animated. This strong tone is subdued by the lyrical, wandering mood of the recitative. The first violin leads a slow, distressed line of music over soft seventh chords, and eventually finds calm in the romance. The finale works around to and ends in A minor, meaning that the quartet ends in the parallel minor to the opening major key.