D Shostakovich - Piano Quintet Opus 57

 

D Shostakovich

 

  1906년 9월 25일 (구력 9월 12일) ~ 1975년 8월 9일)는 소비에트 연방 시절 러시아의 작곡가이다. 그는 소비에트 정부와 복잡한 관계에 있었는데, 1936년과 1948년에는 그의 두 작품이 공개적인 경고를 받기도 했으며, 종종 그의 작품에 대해 금지령이 내려지기도 했다. 그러나 한편, 그는 동시대의 가운데 가장 유명한 소비에트 작곡가 가운데 한 사람이자, 여러 개의 표창과 상을 받기도 했으며, 소비에트 최고 회의 위원이기도 했다.

초창기의 아방가르드 시기를 제외하면, 쇼스타코비치는 주로 낭만파의 작품을 썼으며, 특히 구스타프 말러의 영향을 많이 받았다. 그러나 그는 거기에 머무르지 않고, 무조주의 형식을 도입하였으며 종종 12음렬 기법을 사용하기도 했다. 그의 음악은 강한 대조에, 그로테스크적인 요소를 보이는 경우가 많다. 그의 작품 가운데 교향곡과 현악 사중주 각각 열 다섯 곡씩이 유명하며, 오페라와 여섯 개의 협주곡, 그리고 여러 영화 음악도 널리 알려져 있다.

Piano Quintet Opus 57

 Martha Argerich, Piano
Joshua Bell, 1st Violin
Henning Kraggerud, 2nd Violin
Yuri Bashmet, Viola
Mischa Maisky, Cello

 

I. Prelude. Lent - Poco più mosso - Lento
II. Fugue. Adagio
III. Scherzo. Allegretto
IV. Intermezzo. Lento - Appassionato
V. Finale. Allegretto

 

Shostakovich has come to be regarded as one of the most important 20th century composers. Working in all the traditional genres, he was particularly prodigious with his monumental cycles of 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets. Indeed, despite his early modernist tendencies and his distinctively contemporary and personal sound, Shostakovich primarily worked with traditional forms as well as within a largely tonal harmonic vocabulary. This sense of a modern voice within an unbroken traditional lineage is nowhere more apparent than with his glorious piano quintet of 1940.

 

 Impressed with his first string quartet, the Moscow-based Beethoven quartet asked Shostakovich to write a quintet featuring Shostakovich himself at the piano. The result was an immense success earning Shostakovich the Stalin Prize and a cash award of 100,000 rubles often cited as the largest sum ever commanded by a chamber music work. An early entry in his chamber music catalog, Shostakovich's quintet is one of his most popular works destined to join the small pantheon of singular piano quintets from the likes of Schumann, Brahms and Franck.

Traditional forms and modes of ｅxpression pervade the entire quintet.

 

The first two movements supply a massive prelude and fugue in the finest Bachian sense. Shostakovich was a skillful and artistic contrapuntalist with masterful fugues all through his oeuvre. Directly inspired by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Shostakovich wrote his own substantial set of 24 preludes and fugues for piano, again, a modern voice within an ancient tradition. Here, the prelude and fugue acquire an extra dimension due to the fact that the piano quintet naturally divides between strings and piano, each capable of multi-part textures on their own as well as combining for a unified ensemble. The fugue engages in a variety of traditional techniques including a prominent countersubject.

The third movement is a fantastic scherzo and trio, a highpoint of the work suitable for encore all

by itself. In startling contrast to the poise and grandeur of the prelude and fugue, the scherzo dances with a rustic, wild abandon leering towards colorful parody and dark sarcasm so typical of Shostakovich. Less traditional is a second slow movement, a ponderous intermezzo placed between the scherzo and finale. Here is another face of Shostakovich so vivid throughout his work: an intimate sorrow that rises to a peak of anguish, a plodding sense of fate underlying a poignant song. But it is only a glimpse, an intermezzo that quickly fades into the relaxed tone of a breezy, uplifting conclusion.

 

The finale has a clearly articulated classical sonata form with distinctive themes and a development section. A march-like feel is always just beneath the surface, occasionally swelling in grand gestures while, in between, a brief recollection of the intermezzo temporarily clouds an otherwise sunny end. Throughout the quintet, Shostakovich maintains a remarkable clarity of texture avoiding the dense or quasi-orchestral grandiosity towards which piano quintets tend. This is due in particular to a relatively restrained piano part and a fluid, dynamic ensemble where all five instruments are rarely active simultaneously