Richibi’s Weblog

before taking on Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15,

in E-flat minor, Op. 144, incidentally, let me tell you 

about its meaning for me, it has six movements, all

adagio – adagios, markedly, always remind me of 

John – I’d been flipping through albums, back in the 

Nineties, when albums still sold in that format in 

record stores, I happened to land on a piece with 

not one, not two, nor three, nor four, nor even five, 

but six adagios, John had died only a few months 

earlier, mid 1989, here was something I could sink 

my teeth into, my being, something that could 

really envelop me

Shostakovich famously asked the quartet who 

would give the first performance of the piece, 

in Moscow, January 11, 1975, to play its first 

movement “so that flies drop dead in mid-air 

and the audience start leaving the hall from 

sheer boredom.”, so be warned, it is not  

effervescent, this is not Mozart 

but it was everything, then, that I could’ve

wanted

R ! chard