Concerto for piano, trumpet and strings in C minor, Op.35

It is easy to underestimate Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto. The standard assessment is that it is a naughty game for a mischievous pianist abetted by a cheeky trumpet playmate and a tolerant family of strings. You can even find it written off as nothing more than “a celebration of the Russian circus.” In fact, there is something of the circus or fairground in it: the impudent opening gesture for piano and muted trumpet immediately calls Stravinsky’s Petrushka to mind and the spectacularly impertinent last movement clearly represents a Russian version of the Parisian music-hall aesthetic of Les Six. But there is more to it than that.

The Piano Concerto in C minor is basically a serious work which, with a solo trumpet always there to tempt it, cannot resist sending itself up. Written in the summer of 1933, not long after the publication of Maxim Gorky’s essay On Socialist Realism and the foundation of the Union of Soviet Composers, it could well be the result of an effort on the composer’s part to come to terms with a new and potentially dangerous political situation. The official requirements had not yet been worked out in detail, but it was fairly clear that “modernism,” with which Shostakovich had been associated ever since the the appearance of his youthful First Symphony in 1926, would no longer be acceptable.

Certainly, after the briefly impudent opening gesture with the trumpet, the pianist presents a respectably sober first theme, simple in melodic outline and plainly harmonised in C minor. The trouble is that as it develops, and as the tempo accelerates, the theme is increasingly reluctant to retain its respectability. A change of key to E flat major makes way for a variant cheerful enough to act as a kind of second subject, which in its turn encourages the re-entry of the not so serious-minded trumpet. It is only by virtue of a beautifully scored counterpoint of piano and strings that the trumpet is excluded from the recapitulation, enabling the main theme to close the movement in its original sobriety.

The Lento second movement, which follows without a break, has been described as a waltz. It is surely too serious for that, however, as the highly expressive string writing in the opening bars (anticipating a similar passage in the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony) seems to confirm. It is so serious in fact that, after the dramatic central climax, even the trumpet is moved to register its heartfelt sympathy.

The trumpet plays no part in the transitional third movement, which is curious mixture of fantasia figuration on the piano and G-string eloquence on the violins. But as for the finale - where Shostakovich gives up on the sober demeanour and becomes an irresponsible modernist again - this is very much to the trumpet’s taste. Content at first to echo the piano, it turns to street-song material of its own, which the piano seems to like. Then, after subtly witty allusions on piano and strings to Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto and Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, it introduces an even more vulgar tune, which the piano disdainfully rejects. If the boisterous piano cadenza seems to offer parodies of themes by Haydn and Beethoven (through their relationship to the main theme of the first movement) they are nowhere near as extravagant as Shostakovich’s parody of himself in the closing bars.

The Piano Concerto in C minor was first performed with the composer at the piano and Fritz Stiedry conducting the principal trumpet and strings of the Leningrad Philharmonic on 15 October 1933. Shostakovich’s similarly unambitious Second Piano Concerto was written for his son Maxim twenty-four years later.

Gerald Larner©