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All Music Guide - James Manheim The Pacifica Quartet's cycle of Shostakovich's string quartets, joined with several by Mieczyslaw Weinberg under the rubric "The Soviet Experience," has rightly earned wide acclaim for the group's combination of technical expertise and rich emotional palette. The middle to late Shostakovich quartets heard here were composed in the 1960s, when in the West any suggestion that music was rooted in personal "experience" was met with high academic disdain. But time has proven Shostakovich's experiences to have resonances beyond his own situation and place. These quartets contain such powerful themes as the furious assertion of artistic tradition as a refuge from the hostile ... See more details below Eligible for .