Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No. 1 ,2번

 

 

Shostakovich,

 

 

Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Opus 107

 

Soloist: Sol Gabetta
Conductor: Carlos Kalmar
Orchestra: Orquesta Sinfónica de RTVE
Composer: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)

The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Opus 107, was composed in 1959 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich wrote the work for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days and gave the premiere on October 4, 1959, with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory. The first recording was made in two days following the premiere by Rostropovich and the Moscow Philharmonic, under the baton of Aleksandr Gauk

Scoring and structure

The concerto is scored for solo cello, two flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (each doubling B-flat and A), two bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), one horn, timpani, celesta, and strings.

The work has four movements in two sections, with movements two through four played without a pause:

1. Allegretto
2. Moderato
3. Cadenza – Attacca
4. Allegro con moto

A typical performance runs approximately 28 minutes in length.

Mstislav Rostropovich, cello
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Charles Groves, conductor
Recorded, 1961

Analysis

The first concerto is widely considered to be one of the most difficult concerted works for cello, along with the Sinfonia Concertante of Sergei Prokofiev, with which it shares certain features (such as the prominent role of isolated timpani strokes). Shostakovich said that "an impulse" for the piece was provided by his admiration for that earlier work.^[2]

The first movement begins with its four-note main theme derived from the composer's DSCH motif, although the intervals, rhythm and shape of the motto are continually distorted and re-shaped throughout the movement. It is also related to a theme from the composer's score for the 1948 film The Young Guard, which illustrates a group of Soviet soldiers being marched to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. The theme reappears in Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 (1960). It is set beside an even simpler theme in the woodwind, which reappears throughout the work:

The opening bars of the first movement in piano and cello reduction, showing the initial themes of the cello and woodwind.

The woodwind theme taking on aspects of the DSCH theme itself just before the introduction of the second subject:

The DSCH motive recurs throughout the concerto (except in the second movement), giving this concerto a cyclic structure.

 

One further theme (at bar 96), originating in folk lullabies, is also found in the lullaby sung by Death to a sick child in Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death.

The second, third and fourth movements are played continuously. The second movement is initially elegiac in tone. The string section begins with a quiet theme that is never played by the solo cello. The horn answers and the solo cello begins a new theme. The orchestra plays it after and the first theme is played again. The cello plays its second theme, which progressively becomes more agitated, building to a climax in bar 148. This is immediately followed by the first theme played loudly. The solo cello plays the its first melody in artificial harmonics with answers by the celesta, which leads into the cadenza. The second movement is the only movement with no reference to the DSCH motive.

 

The cadenza stands as a movement in itself. It begins by developing the material from the cello's second theme of the second movement, twice broken by a series of slow pizzicato chords. After the second time this is repeated, the cello's first theme of the second movement is played in an altered form. After the third time the chords are repeated, a continual accelerando passes through allegretto and allegro sections to a piu mosso section. These sections are frequented by the first DSCH motive. The piu mosso section features fast ascending and descending scales.

 

The final movement begins with an ascent to a high D. The oboe begins the main theme, which is based on the chromatic scale. The cello repeats it, and presents a new theme. The cellos of the orchestra repeat this, accompanied by the solo cello playing fast sixteenth notes. At bar 105, a distorted version of Suliko, a song favoured by Stalin and used by Shostakovich in Rayok, his satire on the Soviet system, is played. Then, the flutes play the first theme again. A new theme played in triple time is presented by the orchestra, which is repeated by the cello. Then, the orchestra repeats and alters the theme. The horn, bass instruments and solo cello follow. The bass instruments play a modified version of the theme, which is repeated by the solo cello after. The cello begins playing a new theme that uses exactly the same notes as the DSCH motif. The modified version that was just played by bass instruments is repeated by the solo cello, accompanied by oboes playing fragments of the new DSCH theme.

 

The first theme of this movement is played by the string section after, followed by the new DSCH theme in the woodwinds. The DSCH theme of the first movement is played, answered by the cello. After the third time this is played, the horn plays the theme again in longer notes. Then, the cello plays a passage from the first movement, which is followed by the first theme of this movement played by the woodwinds. This is followed by the first theme of the first movement played by the cellos of the orchestra, accompanied by scales in the solo cello. Then, a modified form of the first theme of this movement is played in the cello. The concerto ends with seven timpani strokes.

 

 

========================================================================

 

Cello Concerto No 2 in G minor, Op 126

 

00:00 Largo
11:48 Scherzo. Allegretto
15:38 Finale. Allegretto

Daniil Shafran, cello
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov, conductor
Live recording, January 1961

 

 

Shostakovich's last major work before his first heart-attack -- his first intimation of his own mortality -- was the Second Cello Concerto. Composed in the early months of 1966, the Cello Concerto seems to have started life as what Shostakovich called his Fourteenth Symphony. In the event, however, the work evolved into the concerto, although the work's symphonic character was so pronounced that Shostakovich wrote to his friend Isaak Glikman "...that the Second Concerto could have been called the Fourteenth Symphony with a solo cello part" (Shostakovich, A Life, Laurel Fay, p. 247).

Although the work was conceived and composed prior to the deterioration of his health, the Second Cello Concerto is, for the most part, a dark and ominous work with a long and introspective opening Largo and a counter-balancing Allegretto finale, which is a sort of dusky barcarolle. Indeed, the work ends with the curious "clock-work" percussion which closed the Fourth Symphony of 1935 and which would close the Fifteenth and final symphony of 1971. Yet the work is not all gloomy: the central movement, also an Allegretto, is based in part on a popular song of the '20s, "Pretzels, Who'll Buy my Pretzels?" Apparently, Shostakovich and some of his close friends saw in the New Year of 1966 with a game of "Name that Tune" and Shostakovich played that tune which he said was one of his favorites. one of the party guests was the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the dedicatee and first performer of the Second Concerto.

Scored for pairs of winds with double bassoon, a pair of horns and of harps, plus a large percussion section, Shostakovich's Second Concerto is a darkly lit work with flashes of light. The outer movements are rhapsodically composed around pivotal climaxes and the central movement is a sardonic scherzo of a type that Shostakovich had been writing since his E flat major Scherzo of 1923 - 1924. The lack of display for the soloist and the inward nature of the music has denied the Second Cello Concerto the popularity of the First Concerto of 1959; nevertheless, it is a great, if underappreciated, work.

 

The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the USSR.
Conductor: E. Svetlanov
Violoncellist: M. Rostropovich
Recorded live in the Large Hall of Moscow State Conservatory,
September 25th, 1966