Shostakovich began his Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11, while composing his First Symphony in December, 1924, but had to hold off completing it until after the symphony was completed, orchestrated, and copied. By the time he returned to the chamber piece in July 1925, Shostakovich had changed his mind about the makeup of the piece. He had originally envisioned it as a suite for double string quartet in five movements and had sketched a prelude and fugue seven months earlier. When he returned to the work, however, he found that he could no longer summon up the enthusiasm for so large a chamber work; his mind was teeming with ideas for what were to become the First Piano Sonata and the Second Symphony. As a result, Shostakovich scrapped the fugue and wrote a scherzo as a counterweight to the preludes instead. He thought the scherzo "the very best thing I have written" ( Laurel Faye, Shostakovich, A Life, p. 28). Both movements are examples of Shostakovich as a young modernist: edgy, piquantly dissonant, highly rhythmic, lightly lyrical, and forcefully driven. If the work seems a distinctly lesser inspiration than the First Piano Sonata which followed it, and the First Symphony which preceded it, it is nevertheless the best piece of chamber music Shostakovich wrote until the Cello Sonata of 1934.

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