Shostakovich
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SHOSTAKOVICH CELLO CONCERTOS NOS 1 AND 2 ENRICO DINDO cello Danish National Symphony Orchestra GIANANDREA NOSEDA © Lebrecht Music and Photo Library Shostakovich at the Royal Festival Hall, 1960 Dmitry Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) Cello Concertos Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 107 (1959)* 26:43 E flat Major • in Es-Dur • en mi bémol majeur Dedicated to M.L. Rostropovich 1 I Allegretto 5:57 2 II Moderato 10:50 3 III Cadenza. Allegretto – Allegro – Più mosso 5:10 4 IV Allegro con moto. Poco meno mosso 4:40 3 Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126 (1966)† 33:12 Dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich 5 I Largo 14:09 6 II Allegretto 4:22 7 III Allegretto 14:40 TT 60:11 Enrico Dindo cello Danish National Symphony Orchestra Christina Aastrand leader* Johannes Søe Hansen leader† Gianandrea Noseda 4 Dmitry Shostakovich: Cello Concertos Nos 1 and 2 Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 107 depths of feeling unheard in Shostakovich’s In the years following his Tenth Symphony output since the First Violin Concerto (1953) Dmitry Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) a decade earlier; and after a massive seems to have made a conscious attempt cadenza, the finale interlocks bitterness and to lighten his style – his Festival Overture, exhilaration. The virtuosity demanded of the film score to The Gadfly, Sixth String Quartet, soloist is considerable, but no more so than Second Piano Concerto, and operetta the virtuosity of the composition itself. Moscow, Cheryomushki are all among his Among the factors contributing to this most tuneful and directly appealing works. rebirth of complexity and profundity were But in 1959, the year of the Cello Concerto, Shostakovich’s enthusiasm for Prokofiev’s the dark shadows that were never entirely Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra absent from his personal life loomed (a recording of which he reportedly played unusually large. After three difficult years he until it had worn out) and the artistry of the was bringing his second marriage to an end. thirty-two-year-old wonder-cellist, Mstislav And for some months he had been suffering Rostropovich, to whom the Concerto is from a mysterious debility of the right hand, dedicated and whose sensational premiere which hampered his ability to play the piano recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra and to write and which was only finally and Eugene Ormandy was supervised by the diagnosed near the end of his life, as motor composer himself. neuron disease. The quick-march first movement is Composed during June and July 1959 propelled forward largely by its opening this Cello Concerto seems to square up four-note motif, heard immediately on the to all the painful issues dodged by those cello. This is a speeded-up version of music preceding works. The angular motifs of its Shostakovich had composed in 1948 for first movement are made to grate against the film The Young Guard, specifically for each other in uncompromising contrapuntal the scene ‘Procession to Execution’; in the abrasions. The slow movement touches Concerto the emotional tone has modulated 5 from sorrow to black-humoured defiance. might seem far-fetched, were it not for the The cello’s recurrent upward striving lines, fact that Shostakovich managed to smuggle the insistent repeated notes of the second in references to Stalin’s favourite folk-tune, theme, the tight-clenched sonorities and ‘Suliko’, at either end of this finale. rude interruptions of the low woodwind sonorities, and the swagger of the solo horn Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126 line all help to sustain a virtually unrelieved When Shostakovich embarked on a new onward momentum. Eventually the manic orchestral composition in February 1966, energy burns itself out before a final he first thought it was going to be his peremptory dismissal. Fourteenth Symphony. As he worked, In the slow movement a hymn-like texture however, the material metamorphosed in the strings sets the scene for the cellist’s into a cello concerto, though even then long-drawn folk-like melody. The solo line in a first draft of the finale was abandoned. the central section grows organically out of Shostakovich eventually finished the piece the hymn idea, mutating into a sarabande and on 27 April, during a recuperative stay at a building towards a passionately protesting sanatorium near Yalta in the Crimea. Less climax. The folk-like melody returns, but now than three weeks later, its dedicatee – once painted in ghostly colours – the strings muted, again Mstislav Rostropovich – came to the cello in harmonics, and the celesta adding play it through for him, and the première a chilling touch of other-worldliness. was scheduled for the composer’s sixtieth Without a break, a lengthy cadenza mulls birthday concert on 25 September. over themes from both previous movements, Shostakovich’s attendance at this event was bridging the gap to the burlesque finale. in doubt until the last moment, since he had This takes the form of a medley of wild folk suffered his first heart attack in the interim. dances, eventually sucking the main theme But he made it to the concert, and both he of the first movement into its vortex in what and the new concerto were rapturously is one of Shostakovich’s most maliciously received. gleeful creations. To suggest that this tone It would not be difficult to account for the of voice might have something to do with dark moods of the Second Cello Concerto the late dictator whose ‘Cult of Personality’ in terms either of Shostakovich’s ongoing had been denounced by Khrushchev in 1956, health problems (in particular the weakness 6 of his bones) or of the ongoing socio-political compact scherzo, and, following without a ills of his country (this was the time of Leonid break, an emotionally wide-ranging finale. Brezhnev’s appointment as General Secretary The soloist opens with a bleak monologue, and of a temporary halt in the painful process highly chromatic in its sinuous contours, of de-Stalinisation). But those moods had long that leaves both tonality and metre only since found expression in his music. They tentatively undefined. Striving upwards, the now crystallised into highly personalised, cello seeks to dispel the prevailing gloom by compact gestures that constitute his late its passionate eloquence, until the entrance style, available for creative exploration for their of xylophone, harp and jabbing woodwind own sake, rather than necessarily as entries chords, all suggestive of a Jewish klezmer in some kind of musical diary. Shostakovich’s band infiltrated by demons. Denied the personal circumstances certainly help us to grim-faced affirmation that permeates the understand his frame of mind. But the picture first Cello Concerto, the first movement ebbs within the frame tells its own, less anecdotal, away in a mini-cadenza, supported by dull more universal, story. strokes on the bass drum. The one musical idea in the Concerto With stabbing perfect fourths and nagging that nevertheless invites programmatic repeated notes the cello announces the interpretation is the dance-like tune heard in scherzo, moving directly into the Odessa the central scherzo and again at the crisis- folksong and decking it out with glissandos point in the finale. This strongly resembles that soon take on a life of their own. The the Odessa folksong ‘Kupite bublichki’ (Buy entire movement sounds as though forced my bread rolls), a favourite melody of the out through gritted teeth, and at the climax, composer’s, and one that he had recently two braying horns over a side drum roll recalled in the course of New Year’s festivities declaim a kind of anti-fanfare. in the company of Rostropovich. That occasion, This is the point at which the finale plus recognition of the tune’s musical potential begins. The cello follows on with an anti- and kinship with Shostakovich’s own style, cadenza (in part a wry skit on Tchaikovsky’s may or may not be the only rationale for its Rococo Variations) still accompanied by inclusion here. the side drum. The tension is then relieved The Concerto is in three movements – by a rocking figure in the harp and a gentle a lengthy meditative opening Largo, a new theme for cello and flute, followed 7 by a wistful, quick-march idea. The sense He has worked with many great conductors, of escapism is reinforced by an apparently among them Riccardo Chailly, Aldo Ceccato, soothing, yet in context quite unreal-sounding, Myung-whun Chung, Valery Gergiev, Paavo perfect cadence. All these themes are then Järvi, Peter Maag, Juanjo Mena, Riccardo stirred into the melting-pot, together with Muti, Günter Neuhold, Gianandrea Noseda another new lyrical idea on the cello built on and Mstislav Rostropovich. one of Shostakovich’s favourite Russian-folk- He has toured with the Franz Liszt like motifs. A disturbing climax is unleashed, Chamber Orchestra in Budapest and Italy, in the course of which the Odessa tune is performing Haydn’s cello concertos, and frogmarched away, vainly protesting. The air in 2001 founded I Solisti di Pavia, acting as clears, and the texture gradually thins down Principal Conductor and Artistic Director. to percussion, double-basses and cello solo. With this chamber ensemble he has toured Finally the cello signs off with a whimsical extensively in Russia, Lithuania, Lebanon, question mark. France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy. Enrico Dindo has recorded all Beethoven’s cello © 2012 David Fanning sonatas and variations with the pianist Pietro De Maria, as well as Bach’s cello suites. Enrico Dindo has performed all over the world alongside great orchestras such as Founded as a radio orchestra in 1925 in the Orchestre national de France, Filarmonica connection with the launch of the Danish della Scala, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Broadcasting Corporation (DR), the Danish della Rai, Kirov Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra National Symphony Orchestra consists today dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, of ninety-nine musicians.