The Pacifica Quartet’s acclaimed survey of Dmitri Shostakovich’s complete string quartets, The Soviet Experience, has been praised as “forceful, intimate, and consummately recorded” (Positive Feedback). Now, record collectors have more reason than ever to acquire this exceptional series in its entirety with the release of this value-priced boxed set offering all four volumes (each a 2-CD set) for the price of two CDs.

The Soviet Experience has been lauded as unique among Shostakovich quartet cycles for including quartets by some the composer’s most significant Soviet-era contemporaries: Nikolai Miaskovsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, and Alfred Schnittke.

Every installment of The Soviet Experience has garnered praise in the U.S. and internationally. Reviewing Volume I, The New York Times said, “The excellent Pacifica Quartet . . . offers electrifying interpretations.” Assessing Volume II, The Classical Review wrote, “the Pacifica’s Shostakovich cycle already is shaping up as definitive, even in a field stocked with . . . formidable Russian contenders.” BBC Music Magazine’s review of Volume III said the series “is turning out to be one of the most riveting of recent years. . . . Pacifica’s Shostakovich cycle is already shaping up as definitive.”