Dmitri Shostakovich

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1

David Brophy talks about the Shostakovich piano concerto . . . 

First things first: have a look at what's written about Beethoven and his third piano concerto elsewhere on this site, select, copy, paste and print.  Now have a good read again and rip it up because this concerto turns that format on its head.

This is the work of a composer who is too often associated with the terrifying in music (albeit with good reason seeing that he not only lived through the likes of Stalin but actually clashed with the regime on several occasions).  Some of that darkness is here at times, but there's also an sardonic wit and effervescent sense of satire at work.

Shostakovich once said that "I want to defend the right of laughter to appear in what is called 'serious music'."

So this is a piano concerto, yes, but it began life as a trumpet concerto before it metamorphosed into the wonderful hybrid of frivolity, circus-like tunes, slapstick knockabout and sometimes touching lyricism that it is.

Four movements: it opens almost introspectively, though the music quickly becomes cheeky.  Shostakovich seems to be quoting and paraphrasing pre-existing music like jazz and popular song at will; and wilfully.  Restless, he shifts from one style to another with each ratcheting-up of the tempi.  The slow movement is pensive and its here that we encounter the three main characters: piano, strings, and then the reprise led off by a mournful trumpet.

The third movement has the piano meander within an ardent string theme, but before we can absorb the (perhaps) rich veins of irony or even cynicism here, we are plunged into the last movement.  And a downright dizzy and thrilling finale it is too.  Allusions to Beethoven, Haydn and Mahler jostle with each other; at one point the trumpet leads the ensemble on a spoof of an Italian folk song before we're plunged into the end and an uproarious pastiche of Beethoven's Rage over a Lost Penny which elbows several other familiar and unfamiliar sounding themes.

Quizzical, uproarious and absolutely thrilling.

Bernard Clarke, RTÉ lyric fm

IF YOU LIKED SHOSTAKOVICH'S PIANO CONCERTO . . .

. . . you'll probably also enjoy these concerts in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's 2007/08 season, at the National Concert Hall or broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm, including two other Shostakovich concertos performed by acclaimed virtuosos.

The brilliant and original first violin concerto with Arabella Steinbacher, along with Tchaikovsky's passionate fourth symphony and a new piece by Ronan Guilfoyle.  To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0208/nso.html

The volatile first Cello Concerto, soloist Pieter Wispelwey, along with
the dazzling colour of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.  To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0328/nso.html

Visceral and spine-tingling music by Shostakovich's Russian contemporary Prokofiev, taken from his ballet Romeo and Juliet; viewers of The Apprentice will recognise the atmospheric Montagues and Capulets as the theme-music.  To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2007/1005/nso.html

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1906-1975

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and stood out as a musical prodigy after taking piano lessons at the age of nine.  In 1918, at the age of twelve, he wrote a funeral march in memory of two Kadet Party leaders who were murdered by Bolsheviks.  In 1919, he enrolled in classes at the Petrograd Conservatory and in 1926 composed his first symphony, and premiered it that same year.
He lived and worked much of his life under the shadow of Stalin and in relation to the way in which music, and all art, was monitored, censored and dictated by the Communist Party.  His symphonies, operas, piano and chamber music are a complex reflection of the fearsome difficulties of survival - physical as well as artistic - at that time, ranging from the exhilarating to the satirical and often bleak, even despairing
He was married three times, to Nina Varzar, to Margarita Kainova and lastly to Irina Supinskaya.