Shostakovich: Sonata for cello and piano in D minor, Op.40 (1934)
Allegro non troppo – Largo (Moderato)
Allegro (Moderato con moto)
Largo
Allegro (Allegretto)
A retrospective look over Shostakovich’s musical output might at first provoke surprise that he should have produced a piano quintet, two piano trios, and a cello sonata before delivering a major string quartet. It is worth remembering that a considerable redressing of balance occurred during the latter half of his career, in that where he was once regarded primarily as a composer of large scale orchestral and vocal works he is now seen to have been equally concerned with chamber music forms. Most of the evidence for this lies in the magnificent series of fifteen quartets, which accounted for an increasing proportion of his creative energy during the final years of his life. But to begin with he had felt more at home using his own instrument – having studied both piano and composition at the Petrograd (Leningrad/St Petersburg) Conservatoire, he probably nourished fanciful dreams of the glittering life of a virtuoso concert pianist. Indeed, he won a Diploma of Honour at the 1927 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw – in effect a consolation prize, since he had been one of the favourites to win, but had been hindered in his preparation by sickness and family troubles.
Shostakovich’s list of compositions includes a sonata for each of the three instruments in a string quartet, and all of them were written at significant stages of his life: the viola sonata was in fact the last work he completed, already confined to a hospital bed for a final time; that for violin (1968) was one of the pieces which heralded a new stylistic departure into what could be described as his own brand of non-serial twelve note technique. But the cello sonata suggested an even more radical change of direction, and what seems so interesting now is that the importance of this work has rarely been acknowledged. Much has been made of Shostakovich’s fall from grace in the aftermath of a Pravda article of 1936 (“Muddle instead of Music”, purportedly penned by Stalin himself); and of how his re-emergence the following year with the fifth symphony demonstrated his apparent abandonment of all modernistic “formalistic tendencies” for a more conventional approach to classical form and harmony. Yet the cello sonata was composed fully three years before this famous symphony, and shows few traces of the progressive experimentation of the preceding years. If anything the sonata is even more reactionary than the fifth symphony, being for the most part decidedly lyrical and non-aggressive – all of which strongly suggests that whatever events might have occurred in 1936/7 the eventual outcome, in purely musical terms, would have been much the same.
Ironically, in January 1936 the composer was away on a tour featuring this very sonata; and it was at Arkhangelsk, on the 28th, where he bought a copy of Pravda and first read the infamous article, reporting a performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtzensk District. Whatever changes of direction his artistic outlook may have taken as a result of this devastating attack, the more restrained musical language of the works which followed was not an entirely new departure. To underline the hollowness of some of the claims made on behalf of the fifth symphony, and its supposed “creative reply to just criticism”, and to demonstrate that Shostakovich’s musical integrity was not entirely the slave of a bunch of uninformed political puppets, one need look no further than this cello sonata. The rigorous control of form, the radically traditional (the paradox of a quasi-reactionary progressivist!) harmonic and rhythmic idiom: all those attributes, so glorified in the symphony, are quietly minding their own business in the sonata. And within the homely confines of a chamber work Shostakovich allows himself an emotional restraint which is the very antithesis of the dramatic programme of the Fifth – not to mention the mind-blowing complexities and outsize gestures of the Fourth, whose composition was still two years away!
The nature of the work points to a sensitive understanding of the cello’s innate character, as well as its technical capabilities. The long-breathed but initially restless lyricism of the first movement might remind one of Rachmaninov, and his own cello sonata; and the underlying march rhythms, which emerge at the end of the exposition and which instigate the strange Largo coda, also betray influences. Yet the assurance and individuality of the composer are everywhere in evidence; and in the next movement we have what is certainly one of the forerunners of the scherzo type found in most of the major works of the following decade: fast, reckless, high spirited, its wit not entirely innocent. The instrumental writing here is particularly resourceful, with an effective exploitation of arpeggiated harmonics in the middle section which not every composer would have the know-how to bring off. After an appropriately serious Largo, whose yearning harmonies also pre-date parts of the fifth symphony, the sonata is neatly rounded off by a finale, the main theme of which affects an almost spooky character, but then keeps bursting into a lively virtuosity born out of a deep sense of fun and enjoyment.
How the composer must have relished playing this piece! The sonata was written for Viktor Kubatsky, who gave the first performance with the composer on 25th December 1934, in the Leningrad Conservatoire Malyi Hall. Although one nowadays associates Shostakovich’s cello works with Mstislav Rostropovich (and they did eventually play the sonata together, as well as recording it) he was only seven years of age at the time, so that particular relationship was still far into the future. This sonata may not be the most ambitious of his chamber compositions, but it is certainly one of the most approachable. What might have happened if the “wise leader and teacher” had heard this work rather than Lady Macbeth?
© Alan George
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