Dmitri Shostakovich composed his 24 Preludes, Op. 34 for solo piano in 1932-33, just after completing his controversial opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.  Not too long after their composition, a handful of the preludes were transcribed for violin and piano by violinist Dmitri Tsyganov of the Beethoven Quartet, the group that premiered many of Shostakovich's string quartets.  Tsyganov began with a set of four (Nos. 10, 15, 16, and 24), then published a set of ten more, and finally this set of Five Preludes.  There were five more preludes that he never arranged for violin and piano, feeling that they were, in essence, too pianistic to work in the new medium.