[1] Peter J. Rabinowitz has also pointed to covert references to Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen in the Eighth Quartet.
[2] The work was written in Dresden, where Shostakovich was to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint project by Soviet and East German filmmakers about the bombing of Dresden in World War II.
In the liner notes of the Borodin Quartet's 1962 recording, music critic Erik Smith writes, "The Borodin Quartet played this work to the composer at his Moscow home, hoping for his criticisms.
But Shostakovich, overwhelmed by this beautiful realisation of his most personal feelings, buried his head in his hands and wept.
1; and the fourth movement quotes the 19th century revolutionary song "Tormented by Grievous Bondage" (Замучен тяжёлой неволей Zamučen tjažóloj nevolej, by Grigori Machtet)[1] and the aria "Seryozha, my love" from Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
The fourth movement of the quartet is used extensively in The Lobster, a 2015 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.