Chamber Music: An Essential History

13. Strictly Confidential: The Chamber Music of Dmitri Shostakovich

thirteen Strictly Con‹dential: The Chamber Music of Dmitri Shostakovich social realist or victim? The principal chamber works of Shostakovich consist of two piano trios (Op. 8, 1923; Op. 67, 1944), sonatas for cello and piano, violin and piano, and viola and piano (Op. 40, 1934; Op. 134, 1968; Op. 147, 1975), the Piano Quintet in G minor (Op. 57, 1940), and ‹fteen string quartets written between 1938 and 1974. String Quartet No. 1 in C major, Op. 49 is an easygoing work that he wrote for the Glazunoff Quartet, which consisted of his colleagues on the string faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.1 Shostakovich’s remaining chamber works reveal ethnic elements that sound, at times, distinctively Russian, and at other times, distinctively Jewish.2 Unraveling the informational knots inherent both in Shostakovich’s music and in commentaries about it is a complex task. Some see him as a social realist who advanced the agenda of the Communist Party, while others view him as the helpless victim of a ruthless, totalitarian regime. The publication of the composer’s memoirs in 1979 has led to a rejection of both images, and has given us the portrait of a composer who conformed to Soviet guidelines in a super‹cial way while embedding encoded messages of rebellion, criticism, and ironic commentary in at least some of his scores.3 As a young composer, Shostakovich focused on public genres, such as symphony, opera, and ballet. These were the media that formed the tastes of the general public; thus, composers who were sincere about advancing 245 Soviet ideology devoted their efforts to these genres. Chamber music, on the other hand, was considered elitist music.4 In the early years of his career , Shostakovich produced only a handful of chamber works. His youthful Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 8 was written following the death of his father , Dmitri Boleslavovich, in February 1922. To help support the family during the hard times that ensued, Shostakovich improvised on the piano to accompany silent ‹lms. It was there, in the cinema, that he and his musical companions learned the score for this elegiac trio, his ‹rst chamber work. The Trio is a single movement in a richly Romantic style. Little of the characteristic Shostakovich can be heard in the piece, save for his uncanny ability to switch effortlessly from lush lyricism to impish, scherzolike gestures. Shostakovich did not regard this production of his youth as a signi‹cant work, and it only became known after Boris Tishchenko (b. 1939) made an edition of the piece and restored the ‹nal twenty-two measures that had been lost from the piano part. The Sonata in D minor for cello and piano was written before he ‹rst ran afoul of Soviet authorities in 1936.5 Its four movements include an expansive but conventional sonata-allegro ‹rst movement, a brief Allegro that seems almost like a transition to the third movement, a Largo of real emotional depth, and a virtuosic Allegro ‹nale. The piece is dedicated to Victor Kubatsky, a cellist whom Shostakovich met in 1925 and who remained one of the composer’s closest friends. Kubatsky and Shostakovich gave the ‹rst performance in St. Petersburg on 25 December 1934. Interpreters of the sonata should be aware of the comments of Arnold Ferkelman , a cellist who played the sonata with Shostakovich: Dmitri Dmitriyevich was a brilliant pianist and had an incredible technique . . . . He knew all the music from memory, not just his own sonata. . . . He liked playing quickly and loudly, and he took incredibly fast tempi. I never succeeded in getting any other pianist to take such tempi. His playing was on the dry side, but on the other hand he played very loudly.6 The Piano Quintet in G minor was apparently to have been the composer ’s second string quartet; however, he had an urge to travel at the time. He realized that if he wrote a piano quintet, he would be invited to tour with whatever ensemble was performing the piece.7 The ‹rst performance of the Quintet, given by the Beethoven Quartet with the composer in Moscow on 23 November 1940, was greeted with enthusiasm. The Leningrad premiere with the Glazunoff Quartet was equally successful. It was in the score of the Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor that Shostakovich 246 • chamber music found his characteristic voice as a composer of chamber music. As...