The Last Movements

In this concert, Camerata Nordica, joined by French violist Manuel Vioque-Judde, presents a program featuring two of the late major works by Beethoven and Shostakovich, pieces deeply connected and spanning across more than a century. Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata, completed just before his death, closes with an “Adagio in Memory of Beethoven,” honoring the composer’s influence and legacy.

Shostakovich began composing the Viola Sonata in May 1975, intending it to premiere in the opening concert of Leningrad’s Glinka Maly Hall season for his 69th birthday. Work on the piece intensified in July, with Shostakovich consulting violist Fyodor Druzhinin about technical challenges. Despite his declining health, he completed the score by July 5, and Druzhinin received the final copy on August 6, just days before Shostakovich’s death on August 9, 1975.

Shostakovich described the Viola Sonata’s first movement as a “novella,” opening with a pizzicato figure reminiscent of Berg’s Violin Concerto and shifting into an austere piano line before returning to its initial theme. The second movement includes themes from his unfinished 1942 opera The Gamblers. The final movement, titled Adagio in Memory of Beethoven, is “bright and clear,” weaving in allusions to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Shostakovich’s own symphonies, and concluding with quotes from Strauss’s Don Quixote and Shostakovich’s early Suite in F♯ minor. This concert will be recorded and released as part of an album in 2026.

Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16, written in October 1826, was his last major work and was never performed during his lifetime. It is one of his shortest late quartets, containing a poignant final movement titled Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß (The Difficult Decision). Here, Beethoven wrote “Muß es sein?” (“Must it be?”), answered emphatically in the main theme, “Es muß sein!” (“It must be!”). He explained in a letter, “Here, my dear friend, is my last quartet. It will be the last; and indeed it has given me much trouble… and that is the reason why I have written the motto ‘The decision taken with difficulty – Must it be? – It must be, it must be!’”