Dvořák 6 Program Notes

During the mid-twentieth century, the Soviet Union was very proud of its great musical hero, Dmitri Shostakovich, who was the first musical superstar entirely trained in the Soviet education system. Despite this civic pride, it is well known that Shostakovich endured brutal treatment when Stalin, who lacked the sophistication to appreciate Shostakovich’s more modern music, came to power. Although Stalin’s venom did not make Shostakovich any less a musical genius, the composer clearly began to express more darkness, more sarcasm, and more pathos, in his music. And in this Concerto, along with its beauty and virtuosity, this sense of anger and psychosis never seems far away.

When Shostakovich began his First Cello Concerto in 1959, Stalin had died six years before and the Soviet regime was changing in a more positive way towards artists, but the scars were clearly still etched into the composer’s psyche. The Concerto was written for the great cello virtuoso, Mstislav Rostropovich (1927 – 2007), who was Shostakovich’s former student when he taught at the Moscow Conservatory. The two musicians became life-long friends, too, and Shostakovich knew that he could give to Rostropovich a work of gritty emotional complexity, and dazzlingly virtuosic passages. Reportedly, Rostropovich memorized the Concerto in four days, and the premiere took place in 1959 with Rostropovich performing the solo part. It immediately became well loved and has remained famous as one of the most challenging cello concertos in the repertoire.

The soloist’s first notes that open the beginning movement, Allegretto (easy paced), are a motive that was extremely meaningful to Shostakovich – they are four notes that, essentially, represent a cryptogram of Shostakovich’s name – D-S-C-H (which, spelled in German, mean the pitches D, Eb, C, and B natural). The pitches are a little out of order, but Shostakovich used this type of cryptogram increasingly in his works, and this four-note motive permeates almost the entire work. The winds answer the cello with pert, staccato (short in length) little rhythms, and at first, the music rather feels jaunty and carefree. But the tone changes quickly. In less than a minute, the soloist plays with increasing fervor and the scoring for the staccato winds becomes thicker and darker. At about a minute-and-a-half into the movement, the timpanist belts out an accented note which sets into motion a menacing march of steely automatons. It’s one of Shostakovich’s more memorable themes. Throughout the rest of the movement, Shostakovich mixes the cryptogram motive with other themes, continually creating new orchestral sounds, such as when the very low contra-bassoon begins to creep up the scale from its lowest depths while the menacing march splinters apart in the other instruments. Most notable, though, is Shostakovich’s use of just one horn in his orchestral forces, who serves as almost a second soloist in this Concerto. The frantic momentum eventually begins to wind down, except for the last few bars, when the timpanist returns to slam the door shut on this first movement.

The second movement, Moderato, at last breaks from all that angry energy into truly lovely music-making. The strings play a soft, night- music chorale in which the horn plays a brief and beautiful solo before the cello soloist enters. The music meanders slowly for a gentle moment, lost in thought, perhaps visiting ghosts with its sad tenor. A breath-catching instance arrives at about five-and-half minutes, when the cello and the winds play a sweet, catchy little tune, the cello singing, the little wind band sounding on the off-beats. It’s unexpected and sweetly pleasing. Soon, the music moves into several moments of shattering volume and a bone-chilling combination of instruments – such as when muted strings meander through deathly quiet murmurs, and the solo cellist plays into its highest reaches by using harmonics. To this is added a celesta, which is a small keyboard instrument that sounds much like a toy piano. Lastly, the hollow sound of the clarinet joins in, and this chamber-like group of instruments settles into a long discussion, all of it beautiful in a surreal and spectral way, until the end of the movement.

From here until the end of the Concerto, there are no breaks between movements, and the cellist moves directly into an extended solo Cadenza. The music begins morphing away from the spooky night music of the previous movement, and gradually begins revving up in energy, speed, and volume.

Without a pause, the final movement, Allegro con moto (fast with motion and drive), arises out of the pyrotechnics of the Cadenza, with a bracing and forward-thrusting theme heard first in the clarinet and oboe. Along the way, the timpani interrupt with random-sounding outbursts, and though everything feels on the edge of chaos, there’s a certain comedy to all this commotion. As everything spins along, Shostakovich introduces several short little motives – beginning with the solo horn, then moving to a squeaky clarinet, where these motives are played obsessively, like someone’s going a little mad – meanwhile, the solo cellist plays a million manic notes per second. And above the soloist’s increasingly jaw-dropping virtuosity, the original opening D-S-C-H motive returns and brings the Concerto to its hyper-energized final bars.