Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata
April 4th, 2007 Posted in classical music, shostakovich
That’s what I am listening to over and over, right now at the moment. It’s going to be a favorite. It already is a favorite. Its curves, its abrupting halts and stops and starts, are insinuating themselves under my skin. Melodies are springing into focus as I type. All in all, it’s a smashing musical offering, and it’s displacing the viola sonata as my favorite late Shostakovich piece.
It seems to be more driven, more alive than that other sonata. Maybe not surprising given that it’s 13 opus numbers earlier and so not quite as pushing on death as the viola one is. What borders it? Well, it’s 134 so we’ve got yet another of my favorite pieces, the 12th string quartet on the bottom-hand side, at op. 133. On the other side we have the 14th symphony, a piece that I wish I liked more – the vocalness is a bit too jarring for me.
Actually almost all my favorite Shostakovich is around this period: Symphony 15 is at 141, the 13th string quartet at 138, the Marina Tsvetaeva poems at 143, and the second cello concerto at 126. What a rich period!
I love the bleakness, the withdrawn and individual nature of the instrumental parts, the striking bittersweet dissonances. I feel like Shostakovich went through four obvious periods: early, enthusiastic experimentation (e.g., the first symphony), a publicly acceptable Stalin-pleasing, life-preserving period (e.g., 5th and 7th symphonies), a vigorous, joyful celebratory Stalin’s-dead period (1st cello concerto, 10th symphony), and finally a period in which he realized that even after escaping the threat of Stalin, death was inevitable (the pieces I mentioned above).
Actually, I feel like the four movements of the 15th symphony are referring to each of these periods, and imitating the styles of each. I’d like to do a more throough post on this. Maybe even write a permanant page. The more I listen to that piece, the more I hear the possible truth of that idea.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Hi, I strongly recommend you get the Julian Rachlin version of the Shostakovich viola sonata. Nothing else has come close and it makes so much difference.
I felt the same as you about the violin sonata (having a good version. Mordkovitch). But after listening to Rachlin there isn’t much to choose between the two works. I think they are equal. What is for sure nearly all his works including the sonatas are first rate and worthy of Beethoven for example.
The violin sonata doesn’t sound good with a bad version( both very dry without a good version). There are not that many violists so not many great performances of that work.