Cello Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)

The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major op 107 is the first cello concerto by Shostakovich Shostakovich from the year 1959. He dedicated it to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who was his student and a good friend.

Genesis and first performance

The concerto was written in a time in which the legacy of Josef Stalin's cultural bureaucracy was slowly overcome during the Khrushchev thaw. Under Stalin, significant parts of Shostakovich's compositions had been regarded as " national foreign and formalistic ". The concert is considered as part of the musical billing Shostakovich and Stalin. On 4 October 1959, the Cello Concerto in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra was premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich with the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky of.

Structure

The Cello Concerto, which begins with a variation of autobiographical motif DSCH and below always refers it, thrives on fresh rhythms, which adapt to changing time signatures flexible, but also occasionally pass over the meter. The flow of the music is created by the many shifts in emphasis. The driving movements and dancing exuberance of the first and third sets are compared to the melancholy of the second set. A Saraband rhythm and simple folk melody formations with occasional barrel-organ sounds and volatile harmonics of the cello give this set those touching poignancy, as it is typical for other works of Shostakovich. The breathless finale is marked by sparkling virtuosity.

Similarly, his Piano Concerto No. 1 is the solo voice another instrument, in this case, a horn, made ​​with various solo parts to the side. A special place in the concert also takes the timpani, which acts as an adversary of the Cello creating always breaks in the melodic and rhythmic flow.

Others

In the third movement ( Allegretto ) of Shostakovich's highly autobiographical and famous String Quartet No. 8 sounds several times to the main subject of the Cello Concerto.