String Quartet No. 15 (Shostakovich)

The String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor, Op. 144 by Dmitri Shostakovich is the composer's last. It was his first quartet since the Sixth and only one of three which did not bear a dedication.
Background.
Shostakovich telephoned Isaak Glikman on May 2, 1974 and told him he had begun work on a new string quartet. He continued to compose, despite difficulties with his right hand, while convalescing in a Moscow hospital. After being discharged, he and his wife traveled to their dacha in Repino for the summer. On June 3, Glikman visited Shostakovich, who told him he had completed the quartet: "I don't know how good it is, but I had some joy in writing it."
In September, Shostakovich returned to Moscow, and presented his new quartet to the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who immediately began to rehearse it. During the rehearsals, he asked the members to play the opening movement "so that flies drop dead in mid-air, and the audience start leaving the hall from sheer boredom." After rehearsals on the morning of October 18, cellist Sergei Shirinsky, one of the group's two remaining founding members, died unexpectedly. Shostakovich asked the Taneyev Quartet, whom he had already familiarized with the score, to take over the responsibility of the world premiere, an offer which the Leningrad-based quartet joyfully accepted.
The Taneyev Quartet performed the world premiere in Leningrad on November 15, 1974, with the composer in attendance. On January 11, 1975 the Beethoven Quartet debuted the score in Moscow, with cellist Yevgeny Altman filling in for the late Shirinsky. Dmitri Tsyganov, the quartet's last founding member, visited Shostakovich in the hospital for interpretive advice a few days before. The composer said to him that he had begun to think over his next quartet, which he promised to dedicate to the new Beethoven Quartet. He then added: "You know, Mitya, I will not be able to finish the cycle of 24 quartets I had promised you."
Music.
The String Quartet No. 15 consists of six movements played without pause. A reviewer for "The Gramophone" theorized that during its gestation Shostakovich may have had in mind the similarly constructed String Quartet No. 3 by his former pupil Boris Tchaikovsky. All but one of the String Quartet No. 15's movements are indicated "Adagio", with the outlier being the "Funeral March" marked "Adagio molto":
A fugue based on a folk-like theme makes up the opening "Elegy," the longest of the six movements. It is followed by a "Serenade" in which a series of "sforzandi" frame a fragmented waltz melody, both of which are constructed from a twelve-note series. This gives way to the "Intermezzo," which conceals a self-quotation from "The Nose", a score which had been revived in the Soviet Union for the first time in 45 years while the quartet's premiere was being prepared. A lyrical "Nocturne" follows, after which a characteristic dotted-motif played unison announces the "Funeral March." The quartet closes with an "Epilogue" which briefly recalls the preceding movements, before fading away "diminuendo".
A complete performance lasts approximately 40 minutes, the longest of Shostakovich's quartets.
Reception.
After listening to a private performance by the Taneyev Quartet at his apartment, Shostakovich thanked them for "having penetrated so deeply the essence of this philosophical work, which I hold most dear." He later invited his fellow composer Dmitry Kabalevsky to attend the rehearsals of the new quartet. After being moved by the work, Kabalevsky quickly cooled to it. He opined that each movement should bear a programmatic title borrowed from Romain Rolland, a suggestion which Shostakovich received tepidly. According to Krzysztof Meyer, the Fifteenth Quartet was greeted with a standing ovation at its premiere, which Shostakovich acknowledged with difficulty because of his deteriorating physical abilities.
Kurt Sanderling, a friend of the composer, speculated that he meant the work as an epitaph for himself: "Perhaps because it was so unfathomably terrifying that he could not dedicate it to anyone." In her overview of Shostakovich's quartets, Wendy Lesser wrote that what the composer "feelingly realizes in this quartet is that there can be no settling into comfortable resignation, no weak or even fearless embrace of death, because something in us always wants to live."