Shostakovich's quartet no. 1, his opus 49, was not the first work that he had written for a string quartet. In the night of the 31 October to the 1 November 1931, while staying in Batumi, Georgia, on the Black Sea, he dashed off two pieces and dedicated them to the Jean Vuillaume Quartet1. However these were transcriptions of other works rather than compositions originally intended as a string quartet.
The first piece, marked Adagio, is a beautifully melodic work pregnant with nostalgic sensuality. It is played in the YouTube link above by the Rasumowsky Quartet and is a popular piece as an 'encore' at the end of a concert. The work, however, is a transcription of an aria which Shostakovich was writing for his up-coming 1932 opera 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District', (opus 29)2. It is Katerina’s, aria 'The foal runs after the filly' from Act 1, Scene 3. The quartet version is less robust than its original in the opera which can be seen in another YouTube excerpt at the end of this article. In the opera the aria's intimate sensuality only emphasises Katerina's sexual frustration.
The second transcription is from the polka from his first ballet 'The Golden Age', op. 22 (1929-30). Although 'The Golden Age' was a 'collective work' it illustrates Shostakovich's leanings towards the pawky3 : it is ballet about a football team4.
Another work by Shostakovich for string quartets before 1938 is his score to the film 'The Girlfriends' (Podrugi)5. This 1934-5 Lenfilm production, directed by Shostakovich's friend, Lev Arnshtam, tells the story of three friends Natasha, Zoya and Asya who become nurses in the civil war having joined the communist party. The score consists of 23 different pieces most of which are written for a string quartet although often supplemented by a trumpet, harp or piano6.
The film was premièred on 19 February 1936, just three weeks after Shostakovich's condemnation in the Pravda article, but his film score was not subjected to any hostile criticism. Nevertheless it is little known probably because Shostakovich failed to make a suite of the music.
The written score has indeed been lost. In 1938, during a restoration of the film by the director Sergei Yutkevich, part of the second movement from Shostakovich's First Quartet was added for the credit sequence at the beginning of the film. Subsequently some fragments of three movements were found in the Glinka museum. When some other movements were later discovered it became clear that Shostakovich had made alterations to his original score for the film. Even with these discoveries the written scores of 15 of the 23 movements have remained lost and needed to be reconstructed by ear from the film track7.
Of particular interest is the appearance in the score of the revolutionary song 'Zamuchen tiazheloi nevolei' (Tormented by a Lack of Freedom) which Shostakovich was to employ again, when working with Lev Arnshtam on another film, in his Eighth Quartet.
