Violin Concerto No.1, Op.99

Discretion being the better part of valour in Soviet musical life under Stalin, Shostakovich held back his First Violin Concerto for as long as seven years after writing it. It was completed (and designated as Op.77) not long after the notorious denunciation of Shostakovich and Prokofiev in the resolution published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1948. The work was first performed (as Op.99) only in 1955, two years after Stalin’s death.

It would have been easy for Stalin’s musicological KGB to find evidence of counter-revolutionary “formalism” in the Violin Concerto, particularly in the first movement. The Nocturne could certainly be defended as a purely poetic inspiration, spontaneously developed and instinctively shaped. It could also be seen, however, as a thoroughly calculated construction based with serialist logic on the melody presented by cellos and basses in the opening bars. Fairly plainly in A/B? minor, this theme is not a tone-row as Schoenberg understood the term. But it does, by means of its dotted rhythm and its salient intervals, have a considerable influence in shaping the melodic material of the rest of the movement, beginning with the supple line improvised by the solo violin on its first entry. Moreover - shortly after the soloist introduces the slightly slower second subject - the opening melody is reshaped by bass clarinet and double bassoon into a regular eight-note pattern built on rising fourths. Repeated by harp and celesta, it sounds more like a serial formulation than a diatonic melody. It is, in fact, a rationalisation of the first subject, which it represents for the rest of the movement, making its last appearance in the final bars.

That formula is also incorporated in the first theme of the Scherzo. But this is about all the two movements have in common. The Scherzo develops its own irresistible impetus and its own melodic impulse, throwing up themes from various sources. The second main theme, for woodwind accompanied by double-stopped percussive chords from the soloist, is based on the composer’s musical monogram D, E flat, C, B (spelling out D Sch in the German nomenclature), and the whirling dance in the middle section seems to be derived from some exotic folk source. Just before the end of the movement, after the recall of the first section, the duple-time exotic dance and the triple-time monogram theme are briefly combined. David Oistrakh - to whom both Shostakovich’s Violin Concertos are dedicated and who gave the first performance of both of them - found “something malevolent, demoniacal and spiky” here.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the theme of the Passacaglia also has much in common with the formula of rising fourths from the first movement. It is a seventeen-bar theme played first by cellos and basses with a countertheme on the four horns. During the course of the movement it recurs eight times - on third bassoon and tuba, twice in succession on cellos and basses, on first horn, horns and tuba, bassoon and tuba, solo violin in octaves, and cellos and basses again. Each time it is accompanied by a structurally significant counter-melody, such as the D Sch monogram in reverse at the beginning of the first variation, a reminiscence of the first movement on solo violin or clarinet and bassoon in the second and third variations, or a solo violin version of the horns’ opening counter-melody in the eighth.

That counter-melody is carried over into the cadenza, a remarkable invention which contrives to be thematically functional and at the same time impressively athletic. Indeed, after a cadenza like that, which is almost a movement in itself and such an intense summary of previous ideas, there is no need for a finale. David Oistrakh preferred to think of this last movement as a “folk festival” rather than as the Burlesque Shostakovich called it. Certainly, one or two of the many themes in it would not have been out of place in the Shrove-Tide Fair in Petrushka. But the composer’s title is relevant in that themes from earlier movements are in fact burlesqued here - not least obviously the once solemn melody of the Passacaglia.