Rather Old and Dissonant Quartet

I forget exactly when I started this piece but it was quite a while ago. The idea was to be like Shostakovich and have a quartet with movements that are all connected. It's very dissonant in places and was intended to be (though in retrospect I think it could have been done a little more tastefully). Comments are appreciated greatly!

I love what you've done with this piece. I don't believe Shostakovitch is what this piece suggests to me, it seems much more expressionistic than late romantic, a bit like pierot lunair.

the first 18 bars or so, to me didn't make for a good opening, however, I absolutely loved the bit from 19-27 that was solid gold. a bit of an atonal "club footed tango" it was disonant, but the rhythmic drive and atonal melodic fragments set it off very well, I was quite sad it ended so quick, perhaps you could expand it more and/or bring it back later in the piece. The portion from 28-39 (even though it was just a recapitulation of the opening idea) was more than tolerable as a divergent idea. 40-75 again amazing rhythmic drive complimented the tonal liberties taken with the melodic fragments and the closing statement at 76 and 77 was the perfect way to cap of that section. I have no comment on the incomplete portion at the end other than a suggestion that you go into 2/4 using the final two beats of the final measure as a new motif, just a suggestion.

All in all a tremendous start to what I hope will be a tremendous piece when complete

Thank you very much for the encouraging comments! I lost interest in this piece for a while but now, as I look at it again, it really is quite a good start (though there is a lot of work to be done).

"The work is never done while the power to work still remains." -annonymous

A few suggestions:
1. At measure 76, there should be two fermatas in the viola part. You already have one; I'd suggest that you put the second one over the last eight note in the triplet. This would match the rest of the parts.
2. The trill in the Violin I part in measure 78-81 would require Paganini-like hands or awkward string-crossings to execute. Try making it more doable by reducing the interval between the notes.