Shostakovich: Impromptu for viola and piano, Op.33, 1931

In 1985 the Fitzwilliam received from VAAP (the USSR State Copyright Agency in Moscow) two interesting pieces for string quartet, which had only recently come to light (enabling us to give their Western première soon afterwards). Since then further unknown or incomplete compositions have also appeared, with the centenary year of 2006 proving particularly fruitful. This brief Impromptu turned up as recently as 2017 – in the vast library of the eminent Russian violist Vadim Borisovsky, a prominent member of the Beethoven Quartet (and dedicatee of Quartet No.13) until his retirement in the early 1970s. His collection has been housed in the Moscow Central State Archives since 2003, but this item was somehow overlooked by researchers. I received the material towards the end of 2021, kindly sent by Emmanuel Utwiller, director of the Association internationale “Dimitri Chostakovitch” in Paris. The Impromptu consists of just one page of manuscript – although he had to squash the final line into two staves only! There is no actual indication of the instrumentation – although the use of the alto clef makes this obvious. Also that it was written for Aleksander Mikhailovich Ryvkin, with whom he had first become acquainted on 2 May 1931 – eight years later, as violist of the Glazunov Quartet, he would take part in the first performance of the composer’s Quartet No.1. So we now know that his last completed composition, the great Sonata Op.147 (1975), was not actually his sole work for viola and piano after all. Although this little miniature – consisting of a lyrical Adagio of just 17 bars, followed by 20 further bars of a moto perpetuo Allegro – would hardly give the slightest clue as to what would follow 44 years later.

© Alan George
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