Chamber Symphony in C minor, op. 110a (String Quartet no. 8, arr. by Rudolf Barshai)

Shostakovich wrote the Eighth String Quartet in Dresden in three days, 12 to 14 July 1960, while working on a film about the bombing of the city. The printed dedication reads: to the victims of fascism and war. In private he called it his own epitaph, and he assembled it from his DSCH monogram and quotations from his symphonies, the First Cello Concerto, Lady Macbeth and a revolutionary funeral song. Rudolf Barshai arranged the quartet for string orchestra with the composer's approval, and it circulates in that form as the Chamber Symphony in C minor, opus 110a.