Shostakovich and Contemporaries, Volume 2

The Pacifica Quartet continues its inventive CD survey of Dmitri Shostakovich's complete string quartets on Cedille Records with a new highly anticipated album that pairs the composer's first four quartets with one by Sergei Prokofiev.  The second in a four-part series of studio recordings that launched in late 2011, The Soviet Experience Vol. II: String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich and his Contemporaries offers Shostakovich's String Quartets No. 1 in C major, Op. 49; No. 2 in A major, Op. 68; No. 3 in F major, Op. 73; and No. 4 in D major, Op. 83; plus Prokofiev's String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92.

The Pacifica Quartet recorded The Soviet Experience: Vol. II in July 2010 and August and November 2011 in closed sessions in the Foellinger Great Hall of Krannert Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Multiple Grammy Award-winner Judith Sherman is the series' producer and engineer.  She also produced the Pacifica's 2008 Naxos CD of Elliott Carter's String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5, which won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance.