- Cello Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)
The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major, Opus 107, was written by
Dmitri Shostakovich in1959 . He wrote it forMstislav Rostropovich , who memorized the work in four days and gave the premiere in Leningrad under Yevgeny Mravinsky, onOctober 9 1959 in the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory. The first recording was made for theCBS label by Rostropovich accompanied by thePhiladelphia Orchestra conducted byEugene Ormandy in November of the same year.The
concerto lasts around 25 minutes and has four movements including thecadenza :
#Allegretto
#Moderato
#Cadenza — Attacca
#Allegrocon moto There are similarities between the concerto and the "Sinfonia Concertante" of
Sergei Prokofiev , such as the prominent role of isolatedtimpani strokes. The composer was quoted in Sovetskaya Kultura (June 6 1959 ) as saying that 'an impulse' for the work was provided by his acquaintance with, and admiration of, the earlier work.Analysis
The first movement eschews the lyricism typical of the genre: its aggressive four-note main theme is 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. It is set beside an even more simple theme in the woodwind, which reappears throughout the work:The woodwind themetaking on aspects of the DSCH theme itself just before the introduction of the second subject:
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'sSongs and Dances of Death .The second, third and fourth movements are played continuously. The second movement is initially elegiac in tone, with a long melody being passed between the cello and the orchestra. The music become progressively more agitated, building to a climax in bar 148; this is immediately followed by a soothing motif from the solo horn (the only
brass instrument in the orchestra) and then an ethereal passage for the cello (playing the first melody inharmonic s) andcelesta . which leads into the cadenza.The cadenza, a substantial 148 bars, stands as a movement in itself. It begins by developing the material from the second movement, twice broken by a series of slow, enigmatic
pizzicato chords. After the second of these, a continualaccelerando passes throughallegretto andallegro sections to apiu mosso , which comes to be dominated by the work's opening theme.The driving finale includes two quotations: the first, at bar 105, is a distorted version of
Suliko , a song favoured by Stalin and used by Shostakovich in Rayok, his satire on the Soviet system. The work's opening material then re-emerges to conclude the concerto, incorporating a second quotation from bar 329. This echoes the swirling snow from the "Trepak " in the Songs and Dances of Death, where it accompanies the seductive song of Death to a drunken peasant freezing in a snowstorm. In a nod to the earlier work by Prokofiev, the concerto's last word is given to thetimpani .References
*Johnson, Stephen (
18 March 2006 ). [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/pip/0fvmj/ Discovering Music: Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No 1] onBBC Radio 3 .
*Shostakovich, Dmitri (1959, reprinted 1986). "Cello Concertos" (volume 17 of collected works). State Publishers 'Music', Moscow.
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