Shostakovich: Miscellaneous chamber works
The most substantial product of Shostakovich’s early years comprised the Two Pieces for String Octet (Op.11) – although the first piano trio should properly be ranked alongside, having finally been published 58 years after its composition: dating from 1923 and listed as Op.8, this teenage C minor predecessor of the great Op.67 trio was dedicated to Tanya Glivenko, a girl just two weeks younger than Dmitri, whom he met earlier that year in the Gaspra Sanatorium in Crimea, where he was recovering from bronchial tuberculosis. He was seriously attracted to her; and although – to his great joy – those feelings were reciprocated, various circumstances (including the death of his father) conspired to hinder the development of their relationship. Eventually she married someone else. The trio was composed in the Autumn, drawing on his happy memories of the Crimea. Since he had recently secured a job as accompanist in a cinema, the composer cleverly managed to rehearse it, together with fellow students Venyamin Cher and Grigori Pekker, as background music for a silent film! The actual premiere was given by N. Fyodorov, A. Yogorov, and L. Oborin on 20th March 1925, in the Moscow Conservatoire Malyi Hall. Although allotted its opus number by the composer himself the work had to wait until 1981 for the manuscript to be edited for performance by his pupil Boris Tishchenko. In one continuous movement, with alternating fast and slow sections, it displays individual passion and fervour – despite its harmonic language being disappointingly under-developed.
However, a year later both Symphony No.1 and the Octet pieces had quickly refuted that charge! (see separate essay on Op.11). In the meantime he wrote three short pieces for cello and piano, the third of which – a Scherzo in C major – was dedicated to his poet friend Volodiya I. Kurchavov, all too soon being commemorated in the Octet. Setting a precedent for so many later works, its companion pieces – Fantasia in F sharp minor and Prelude in A minor – were also headed by personal inscriptions: respectively, to his younger sister Zoya Dmitrievna and to fellow student Valerian Bognanov-Berezovsky – who later became an admired critic, writer, and composer. Listed as Op.9, all three pieces were performed in the same concert as the trio, on 20th March 1925 – after which the manuscript was lost. Sadly, a similar fate befell three later pieces for solo violin, dating from 1940 and given in some sources as Op.59 (which number more properly belongs to music for the film The Adventures of Korzinkina – also lost!).
Finally, we know of Twelve Preludes for String Quartet, probably composed (maybe as a diversion) while at work on a film score for The Girl Friends (Op.41) in 1934/5 – which may have led Boris Schwarz to speculate that this material was an intended First Quartet, since Shostakovich had mentioned such a possibility three or four years before the plan eventually came to fruition. In any case, the Preludes were among several works lost when the Lenfilm Studio was bombed in 1941.
Two more well known sets are in fact arrangements taken from various film scores and incidental music: Four Waltzes for flute/piccolo, clarinet, and piano are transcriptions by Lev Atovmyan of Spring Waltz from Michurin (Op.78), Waltz-Scherzo from The Bolt (Op.27), the waltz from The Return of Maxim (Op.45), and Barrel-Organ Waltz from The Gadfly (Op.97). The third of these also appears in a different arrangement by Konstantin Fortunatov as the last of Three Violin Duets (with piano), for which The Gadfly again provided an item: its Prelude is followed by the Gavotte from The Human Comedy (Op.37).
The Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok, Op.27, might justifiably be mentioned here, in that the soprano voice is accompanied by the instruments of a piano trio in all six permutations of solos and duos, with the full ensemble reserved for the final setting. Shostakovich explained:
The seventh and final Romance I gave my own title – Music, since the poem is directly about this. I wanted to give the same title to the whole cycle, because it is written to very musical words….
Galina Vishnevskaya, David Oistrakh, and Mstislav Rostropovich were among the original executants, with the indisposed Sviatoslav Richter having to be replaced by the composer Moisei Vainberg. The songs were intended to honour the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution (in 1967), but Blok’s troubled and inward looking verses must have seemed a strange (and controversial) choice for such an event – although they could be viewed as a significant pointer towards the harrowing world of Shostakovich’s eight remaining years.
No such depressive thoughts find their way into the Concertino for Two Pianos (Op.94), written in 1953 for the composer to play with his fifteen year old son. Although young Maxim was partnered by a fellow student (Alla Maloletkova) for the first performance the following January, his father took his rightful place for the Melodiya recording two years later. The domestic origins of this work can serve as the reason for including it as “chamber” music. Likewise a Tarantella and Prelude for two pianos: written c1963, specifically for children, the latter was arranged from No.15 of the magnificent Op.87 set of Preludes for solo piano – which assuredly guarantees its quality!
© Alan George
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