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CD REVIEW
Dmitri Shostakovich
Violin Concerto #1 in A minor, Op. 77
Violin Concerto #2 in C Sharp minor, Op. 129
Romance from The Gadfly
even a very close relative of DSCH. The rhythm becomes more and more insistent, until finally a rondo finale
erupts with a boom from the kettledrum. It sounds like an update of the finale to the Tchaikovsky concerto,
with the same general dance rhythm but with Shostakovich's acid harmonies and far more brutal outlook as
well. Instead of Tchaikovsky's peasant joy, we get pure manic. Toward the end, the beginning of the
passacaglia bass sounds almost subliminally on the French horns. The violin seems to notice this and throws it
into the glare of a frantic coda.
The second violin concerto comes from the stormy Sixties. Symphony #13 "Babi Yar" had already made a
huge hit in the West, to the dismay of Soviet officialdom, and indeed began to force a re-evaluation of
Shostakovich from party and musical hack to something like his current status, at least in the West. Ironically,
young Russians now tend to see him as the old time-server, toadying to Stalinists and post-Stalinists alike.
Compared to the first, the second concerto concentrates more. It is less public and more personal an
utterance. If anything, it's even bleaker than the earlier work. The orchestral sound is leaner, the lines more
sinewy. Fewer instruments tend to play at any moment. The first of its three movements contrasts a darkly
lyrical idea with a ghostly little marche militaire. The riff appears here, too, but more as a generating
principle, rather than as a full-fledged theme. Shostakovich seems to have absorbed it into his musical DNA.
As in the first concerto, Shostakovich flirts with sonata form in his characteristic way: the two moods often
proceed simultaneously, with one or the other momentarily gaining the upper hand. The dark song comes
back toward the end, and we reasonably expect the movement to end with that. But no, Shostakovich brings
back the little march, even more skeletally than before. This confounding of expectations characterizes the
composer's late period. If Shostakovich seemed emotionally elusive before (and the fights over the "meaning"
of his music bolster this idea), he becomes Sphinx-like as he gets older, until we get something like the
Symphony #15, which tantalizes us with keys to the composer's entire musical corpus but hides the locks.
The second movement has affinities with the first concerto's passacaglia. It's not a passacaglia, but it does
tend to repeat the same ideas with little variation. This builds intensity. One hears two main themes, of
different shapes but the same in mood unrelieved melancholy. The movement ends in a kind of affectless
funk. As in the first concerto, a brief transitional passage on the solo violin (considerably shorter than its
counterpart) leads us directly into the finale, another rondo. For the first time in this concerto, we get
genuinely fast music, though hardly extrovert. The folk element, relatively strong in the first concerto, lies
deep beneath the surface, if at all. Shostakovich doesn't even feign exuberance here, for the most part. The
music doesn't dance so much as lacerate. The scoring is as lean as rawhide. About half-way through, the
violin takes its full cadenza, mainly a discussion of the rondo but with ideas from the earlier movements
occasionally peeking out. The orchestra re-enters, fuller this time, but keeping its leanness. The big ending
strikes me as ironically pro forma.
The disc ends with a Shostakovich lollipop: the romance from The Gadfly concert suite, arranged by another
hand from Shostakovich's film score. The composer made money through his film work, and much of the
music to The Gadfly sounds like it. The film itself is a silly romance-adventure the Soviet equivalent to
Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche or Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel. This is Shostakovich doing his best Tchaikovsky
impression, and it's pretty damn good. When we compare it with the two concerti, the cream toffee of it all
jars. Even one of the Satirical Dances would have worked better.
Since their early obscurity, the violin concerti have become often-played and often recorded. You have your
choice of violinists: Chang, Hahn, Josefowicz, Kremer, Midori, Mordkovitch, Oliveira, Perlman, SalernoSonnenberg (I've heard her live wonderful! but not the recording), Spivakov, Vengerov, among others.
The premire violinist in both senses of the phrase remains David Oistrakh. The two concerti's entrance
into standard rep has, to a great extent, smoothed out the rough edges, and for me rough edges make these
concerti. With Oistrakh, one gets a sense of struggle with new, difficult music, as well as an uncanny affinity
for or familiarity with the composer's psychic world. Daniel Hope does, I believe, a smart thing by joining with
Maxim Shostakovich, the composer's son. I had the pleasure of hearing the younger Shostakovich on a
regular basis. For certain kinds of music and I include the music of his father he was damn good as well as
smart about what he programmed. By his own admission, Hope learned something. However, structure is not
the conductor's strong suit. He goes mainly for the gut, rather than for the head. He does best in things like
the last three movements of the first concerto and the finale to the second, and it's a very good best.
Yet the composer aims for both gut and head. This becomes a problem in the "Nocturne" of the first concerto,
where the thread occasionally gets fumbled. It's also a problem in the second concerto, which has fewer
obvious jolts. Where Oistrakh and Rozhdestvensky build spans of almost unbearable tension, Hope and
Shostakovich give us something far more relaxed. Hope, however, remains a fabulous violinist, but there are
other fabulous violinists out there. Still, for the coupling and the price, this disc remains in contention.
Copyright 2008, Steve Schwartz