History AwesomeMusic / DmitriShostakovich

* The [[https://youtu.be/7wNxgM-1DV4 Op. 87 set of 24 Preludes and Fugues]] for the piano, inspired by Music/JohannSebastianBach's ''Well-Tempered Clavier'', are full of awesome moments for both composer and performer. The fugues largely follow the same structure - establishing the subject in each voice, then wandering far away from and eventually back to the home key, and finishing with liberal use of stretto (overlapping subject entrances) - but they all have individual touches that make them truly unique.

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wNxgM-1DV4 Op. 87 set of 24 Preludes and Fugues]] for the piano, inspired by Music/JohannSebastianBach's ''Well-Tempered Clavier'', are full of awesome moments for both composer and performer. The fugues largely follow the same structure - establishing the subject in each voice, then wandering far away from and eventually back to the home key, and finishing with liberal use of stretto (overlapping subject entrances) - but they all have individual touches that make them truly unique.

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4GwE_zwv7A 24 Preludes, Op.34]] are Shostakovich's tribute to [[Music/FryderykChopin Chopin]]'s Op.28 preludes, and while they are overshadowed by the later Preludes and Fugues, they still represent the apex of his early compositions for piano.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkZempxbtww Symphony No.1 in F minor]] was Shostakovich's conservatory graduation piece, and really put the 19-year-old composer on the map. Though less dense than his later symphonies, it still boasts all the hallmarks of his style, including bold harmonies, sardonic humour, toying with the listener's perception of rhythm and metre, and a dark edge to the expected triumphant conclusion.
** Audiences had to wait 25 years for the first performance of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_KWZutFM-U Symphony No.4 in C minor]] after Shostakovich was obliged to cancel the premiere in 1936, then had to wait for a more favourable political climate to try again. It was worth the wait; though the work poses challenges for both performers[[note]] It calls for the largest orchestra of any of Shostakovich's symphonies, with over a hundred musicians, and is intensely demanding on both a technical and an interpretive level.[[/note]] and listeners, it is an emotional rollercoaster that is never less than captivating, from the woodwind shriek that opens the first movement, the four-part interval canon in the woodwinds in the second movement scherzo as well as the percussion figure for snare drum and castanets in its coda, to the melancholy celesta solo over sustained notes in the strings that closes the finale.
** The finale of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogJFXqYEYd8 Symphony No.5 in D minor]] is brilliant and exciting, always climbing up by semitones and pushing the tension up further with each step, along with judicious use of DramaticTimpani.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPL1U_cKlt0 Symphony No.6 in B minor]][[note]]It's worth noting that Symphony No.6 by [[Music/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky Tchaikovsky]] is also in B minor, a fact that Music/LeonardBernstein pointed out when talking about Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony.[[/note]] condenses the typical four-movement symphony into three movements by opening with a vast and introspective slow movement; the energy builds across a typically sarcastic Shostakovich scherzo and a Presto finale inspired by Music/GioachinoRossini's ''William Tell'' overture that gallops toward a "victorious" major resolution in which the thunder of timpani threatens to overwhelm the rest of the orchestra.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z8TZjcqYhY Symphony No.7 in C major]] (''Leningrad'') went a long way toward sustaining the morale of the Soviet people during the Nazi invasion (its first performance was broadcast on loudspeakers outside the city so that the German army could hear that Leningrad's spirit had not been broken). The grandeur of the opening theme and the sheer menace of the "invading army" theme that starts about five minutes into the first movement and, through the BoleroEffect, grows ever more imposing until the snare drums sound as though they're hammering straight through the skin of their instruments are some of Shostakovich's most powerful musical moments.[[note]] The composer occasionally hinted that the growing menace represented by the twelvefold repetition of the "invading army" theme was not a depiction of the Soviet Union being destroyed from without by the Nazis, but rather a depiction of destruction from within by the Party higher-ups perverting the tenets of Communism for personal gain.[[/note]]
** The third movement of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAKCr5LCf9M Symphony No.8 in C minor]] opens with a violent perpetual motion theme in the violas, and remains one of the composer's most fascinating yet terrifying orchestral movements.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfakIg9E_ao Symphony No.9 in E-flat major]], written at the behest of UsefulNotes/JosefStalin who commissioned it as a celebration of victory in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, completely mocks the idea of a grandiose celebratory symphony in favour of a more "folksy" style. Far from being the bombastic victory ode Stalin expected, it sounds like Shostakovich's own answer to the question posed by Prokofiev's ''Classical'' symphony: what sort of music would Music/JosephHaydn write if he were alive in the 20th century?
** Popular rumour holds that the downright frightening second movement scherzo from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKhSca8CS1c Symphony No.10 in E minor]] is a musical portrait of Stalin (who was dead by the time the symphony was composed - had there been a whiff of the movement being "dedicated" to the dictator while he was alive, Shostakovich would have been in front of a firing squad within hours). Whether or not this is true, it is four minutes of unrelenting musical horror, worlds away from the eventual major key triumph in the coda of the finale.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJLfgkEXQkA Symphony No.15 in A major]] includes a plethora of references to his earlier works that makes it a fitting capstone to his symphonic output. Standout moments include the wry direct quotes from the ''William Tell'' overture in the first movement and the "Fate" {{Leitmotif}} from ''Theatre/TheRingOfTheNibelung'' by Music/RichardWagner; Shostakovich himself admitted to his friend Isaak Glikman, "I don't myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could ''not'', could ''not'', ''not'' include them."
* For the lighter (yet still awesome) side of Shostakovich, there's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX1fiE0U1qA Waltz No.2]] from the Suite for Variety Orchestra, along with his [[http://youtu.be/1gDZTah8J2A Festive Overture]], which gets bonus points for possibly being a [[TakeThat celebration]] of the death of UsefulNotes/JosephStalin the previous year.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRq4ztEAjak Tahiti Trot]], if you know the backstory: a conductor friend played a recording of [[Theatre/NoNoNanette "Tea for Two"]] to the 22-year-old Shostakovich, and bet him 100 roubles that he could not do a complete orchestration from memory in 1 hour. He did it in 45 minutes.

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrBN7TVF6Fs Piano Concerto No.1]] began as a concerto for trumpet and strings, and even following its "hijacking" by the piano, the trumpet remains prominent. The return of the slow movement's primary theme for muted trumpet represents the concerto's emotional heart, and while the finale tests the pianist's agility with multi-octave leaps in both hands and a brief cadenza which wryly quotes [[Music/LudwigVanBeethoven Beethoven's]] ''Rage Over a Lost Penny'' rondo, the trumpet dials things back with a genial melody (despite a loud interruption from the piano) and effectively leads the charge through the triumphant coda.
*** Shostakovich composed his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXzznXZuxZE Piano Concerto No.2]] as a 19th birthday gift for his son Maxim, so its technical demands are modest, but it makes up for this with a real sense of fun. The airy first movement sees the soloist and the orchestra wind melodies around each other, and even the loud outbursts in the development are full of good humour. The slow movement, one of Shosty's most celebrated, alternates between a haunting minor key theme and a nostalgic major key theme and leads straight into a finale that affectionately parodies the studies of Charles-Louis Hanon on which Maxim had cut his pianistic teeth, all building up to something extremely rare in the composer's output: a truly joyful conclusion.

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXBugKoo7L0 Violin Concerto No.1]] was composed in the late 1940s for Shostakovich's friend David Oistrakh, but audiences had to wait until 1955 to hear it. Things get off to a sinister start with the opening Nocturne, then turn downright "demoniac" (to use Oistrakh's word) with a Scherzo with a Jewish-influenced trio and a dizzying fugato passage on the scherzo theme that sees the violinist and various sections of the orchestra throw the subject and two countersubjects back and forth with abandon before exploding into a major key version of the trio theme. The weighty, gloomy Passacaglia likewise passes countermelodies back and forth (with one repetition of the ground bass given to the soloist) before leading into a technically vicious solo ''cadenza'' that brings back themes from the Nocturne and Scherzo. The boisterous yet sardonic concluding Burlesque evokes images of a Russian festival and brings things full circle with reminiscences of the previous movements throughout.
*** Like Prokofiev before him, Shostakovich befriended the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and composed his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h23WjKXDe4w Cello Concerto No.1]] in 1959 especially for Slava. The opening four notes played by the soloist set the grim tone for the first movement, with a supporting role played by a solo horn that makes several attempts (some unsuccessful) to re-assert the opening theme. The eerie, sparsely-scored slow movement sees the orchestra and the soloist each presenting their own thematic material, all building to a spectacular full orchestral climax three-quarters of the way into the movement before the soloist, accompanied by a celesta, brings us back to earth. The ensuing five-minute solo ''cadenza'' throws the previous two movements into a blender, then hurtles without pausing for breath into a finale that includes a gleeful parody of one of Stalin's favourite songs, "Suliko", before returning the concerto to the four-note motif with which it began.
* Shostakovich ranks just behind [[Music/MauriceRavel Ravel]] and [[Music/BelaBartok Bartók]] when it comes to 20th century composers of string quartets. Though most of his fifteen quartets function as a musical personal diary (especially the most frequently performed of them all, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tby5aMrMu6Q No.8 in C minor]], which is dominated by his "musical monogram" of "D E-flat C B"[[note]] In German note notation, "D Es C H" = "D. Sch." = "Д.Ш."; it first appears, in slightly modified form, in the Scherzo from his Violin Concerto No.1, then appears more explicitly in the finale of his Symphony No.10.[[/note]] and includes quotes from multiple previous compositions of his), describing thoughts and exploring musical ideas that Stalin's government would never have allowed to be made public, there's some awesome mixed in with the intensely emotional journeys, particularly in the early quartets.
** It took just six weeks for Shostakovich to compose [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-RM8SnsIp0 Quartet No.1 in C major,]] and the innocent lyricism, described by the composer as "spring-like", makes it truly unique among the largely dark and introspective collection of his string quartets. The solemn slow movement and eerie scherzo are very much in his signature style, but the easy-going opening movement and effervescent finale are both breaths of fresh air, worlds away from the unhappiness that inspired so much of his other chamber works.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY9fp_Febaw Quartet No.2 in A major]] goes from a brash opening Overture to a nuanced Recitative and Romance (the first violin gets extended time in the spotlight in the recitatives bracketing the romance) to a spooky Waltz in which the four instruments play with mutes throughout - in spite of which the music manages to build to a hellish ''fortissimo'' climax in the middle - to a grim Theme and Variations in which the energy of each variation is turned up further and further to a furious release in the form of a re-iteration of the movement's introduction, another appearance of which closes out the quartet in A minor instead of A major.
** Though Shostakovich never really stood by the "horrors of war"-inspired "programme" he officially published for the five movements of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pONaDQZwoEg Quartet No.3 in F major]], the shift from an opening movement of outward calm with tension just below the surface (with an especially clever fugato passage on its main theme in the development) to two scherzi, the first tense and the second pure, unrelenting fury, followed by a sombre slow movement and a finale that seems to be trying to pick up the pieces certainly puts one in mind of a terrifying cataclysm and its aftermath.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE1BgSY_iII No.7 in F-sharp minor]] is the shortest of Shostakovich's quartets, but it stands out for the frenzied fugal passage that opens the finale, culminating in a dissonant, distorted rendition of the main theme of the first movement to herald a coda that brings the quartet full circle by combining the fugue subject with the first movement theme, with the latter ultimately getting the last word.
** Like No.8 before it, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DbxO1QUmaA Quartet No.9 in E-flat major]] is composed in five movements played without break. In each of the first four movements, Shostakovich ingeniously creates more seamless transitions by putting together the next movement before the previous movement has finished, and the sense of musical unity is reinforced by the use of a theme from the first movement in the middle of the scherzo and the coda of the finale, and by the appearance of the main theme from the fourth movement after the climax of the dizzying fugato passage in the finale.

** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2xpRD78Yi8 Cello Sonata]] is one of the 20th century's best examples of the form, boasting a sonata allegro that goes to the far side of the circle of fifths for the exposition and then dials the tempo down to Largo for the recapitulation, a tense scherzo featuring triple octaves and judicious use of harmonics, a haunting Largo that takes cues from Impressionism to paint a musical picture of bleak Russian landscapes, and a sardonic rondo that features a virtuosic piano passage in one episode and an abrupt final gesture.
** The Beethoven String Quartet premiered nearly all of Shostakovich's string quartets, but his first composition specifically for them was the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEPiqK-jqTc Piano Quintet,]] another masterpiece of its form. The first two movements are a stark Prelude and a Fugue that strays from its minimalist subject in the centre section but eventually returns in ''stretto'' in a contrapuntal masterstroke. There follows a Scherzo that tumbles acrobatically through chords and parallel octaves, and a solemn Intermezzo that leads straight into the joyful, major key Finale.
** Shostakovich composed his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IesxWe1pT28 Piano Trio No.2]] in memory of his friend Ivan Sollertinsky, and while "awesome" doesn't quite fit the sombre atmosphere that pervades most of the piece, it still stands out for its prolific use of artificial harmonics in the cello at the beginning of the first movement,[[note]] When the violin makes its first entrance, it is playing over two octaves ''lower'' than the cello.[[/note]] a relentless second movement scherzo that boasts the composer's signature sardonic humour, and a stark passacaglia that leads straight into a finale with a secondary theme heavily influenced by Jewish folk music, first stated in the piano over percussive pizzicato chords in the violin and cello. And just as the movement builds to a climax, it immediately comes apart in a piano whirlwind over which the violin and cello try to restore order by taking the music back to the beginning of the first movement.
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V0X5oyuPUU Violin Sonata]] was written for David Oistrakh as a 60th birthday present.[[note]] This had been the original intention of his Violin Concerto No.2, but he got the dates wrong and composed it a year early.[[/note]] The slow opening movement takes cues from Prokofiev's first violin sonata, and, in one of Shostakovich's many experiments with twelve-tone writing, much of the music grows out of the tone-row that opens the piece. After a harsh scherzo in his inimitable style, Shostakovich concludes with an expansive passacaglia that culminates in a passage for unaccompanied violin, followed by a coda that brings back material from the first movement, including the final ''ponticello'' double fourth tremolos in the violin.
** The last piece Shostakovich completed before his death from heart failure in 1975 was the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lycYG6oJcvU Viola Sonata,]] and though undeniably downbeat, it still finds time for humour and playfulness, most notably in the operatic second movement scherzo.[[note]] Shostakovich adapted the second movement from his unfinished 1942 opera ''The Gamblers''.[[/note]] The concluding Adagio was intended as a tribute to Music/LudwigVanBeethoven, with frequent invocations of the rhythm from the melody and the rising triplet accompaniment from the first movement of the ''Moonlight'' sonata, but it also represents Shostakovich at his most intensely personal as it weaves in many quotes from his own works, including ''all fifteen'' symphonies.

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXBugKoo7L0 Violin Concerto No.1]] was composed in the late 1940s for Shostakovich's friend David Oistrakh, but audiences had to wait until 1955 to hear it. Things get off to a sinister start with the opening Nocturne, then turn downright "demoniac" (to use Oistrakh's word) with a Scherzo with a Jewish-influenced trio and a dizzying fugato passage on the scherzo theme that sees the violinist and various sections of the orchestra throw the subject and two countersubjects back and forth with abandon. The weighty, gloomy Passacaglia likewise passes countermelodies back and forth (with one repetition of the ground bass given to the soloist) before leading into a technically vicious solo ''cadenza'' that brings back themes from the Nocturne and Scherzo. The boisterous yet sardonic concluding Burlesque evokes images of a Russian festival and brings things full circle with reminiscences of the previous movements throughout.

*** Shostakovich composed his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXzznXZuxZE Piano Concerto No.2]] as a 19th birthday gift for his son Maxim, so its technical demands are modest, but it makes up for this with a real sense of fun. The airy first movement sees the soloist and the orchestra wind melodies around each other, and even the loud outbursts in the development are full of good humour. The slow movement, one of Shosty's most celeberated, alternates between a haunting minor key theme and a nostalgic major key theme and leads straight into a finale that affectionately parodies the studies of Charles-Louis Hanon on which Maxim had cut his pianistic teeth, all building up to something extremely rare in the composer's output: a truly joyful conclusion.