Violin Sonata Op.134 (1968)

David Oistrakh surely knew the composer too well to expect anything particularly festive from the Violin Sonata he had been promised as a celebration of his 60th birthday. He had actually had a 60th birthday present from Shostakovich before – the Violin Concerto No.2 dedicated to him by mistake, so the story goes, on his 59th birthday – and that was a far from frivolous work. Even so, he must have been surprised to receive a score as sombre as that which was handed over to him a few months before he was to give the first performance, with Sviatoslav Richter, in the Moscow Conservatory in May 1969.

Having suffered a heart attack in 1964, Shostakovich had been so depressed that he had been unable to get back to regular work for some time. An important factor in his recovery was Benjamin Britten’s visit to him in Moscow round New Year in 1967 and their shared interest in 12-note music. Britten had already made his own adaptation of the technique in his Turn of the Screw, which Shostakovich greatly admired, and it could well have been his example that inspired the Russian composer to introduce an element of it, against all the political odds, in the 12th String Quartet and the Violin Sonata, both in 1968.

The opening theme of the Violin Sonata, presented in quiet octaves by the piano, touches on 12 different pitches in its first fourteen notes and it goes on to supply much of the melodic material of much of the first movement. But, as the piano repeats that theme, the violin enters to personalise it with an expressive reminder of the four-note motif by which Shostakovich signs himself in many of his works. Not that anyone familiar with his music would have much difficulty in identifying the composer when a new march-like theme in detached rhythms makes an appearance on the piano. It too is a twelve-note theme but at the same time entirely characteristic of Shostakovich. The rest of the movement is concerned with developing that material, but not without introducing two other sounds – a whispered cascade of violin arpeggios and, a few bars later, an ominous warning of two loud notes a fourth apart made by piano trills and a resoundingly plucked violin.

The second movement is a hard-driven, mainly loud kind of scherzo. Beginning and ending as a grotesquely aggressive march, it includes a more tuneful if still fierce episode in triple time in the middle. In its unremitting hyperactivity and frequent recourse to multiple stopping it calls for immense stamina from the violinist.

Like Britten, Shostakovich was more than once drawn to the passacaglia form, as in the last movement of the present sonata. The 11-bar theme is first heard, after a short but heavily emphatic Largo introduction, in plucked notes on the unaccompanied violin, then low on the piano under a variant on violin, then in the right hand of the piano over a variant in the left, then in double-stopped chords on the violin… And so it goes on, generally increasing in activity (though not in tempo) until the intervention of sensational cadenzas for both instruments. The opening Largo gesture and the passacaglia theme are recalled and, as the work draws to a close, so are ideas from previous movements – including the whispered cascade of violin arpeggios and, in the very last bars, the ominous warning in sul ponticello tremolandos.

David Oistrakh surely knew the composer too well to expect anything particularly festive from the Violin Sonata he was writing to celebrate his 60th birthday. He had actually had a 60th birthday present from Shostakovich before – the Violin Concerto No.2 dedicated to him by mistake, so the story goes, on his 59th birthday – and that was a far from frivolous work. Even so, he must have been surprised to receive a score as sombre as that which was handed over to him a few months before he was to give the first performance with Sviatoslav Richter in the Moscow Conservatory in May 1969. He was, however, profoundly impressed by it: “I want this sonata to be played,” he said.

Having suffered a heart attack in 1964 – which was only one of his medical problems – Shostakovich had been so depressed that he had been unable to get back to regular work for some time. An important factor in his recovery was Benjamin Britten’s visit to him in Moscow round New Year in 1967 and their shared interest in 12-note music. Britten had already made his own adaptation of the technique in his Turn of the Screw, which Shostakovich greatly admired, and it could well have been his example that inspired the Russian composer to introduce an element of it, against all the politcal odds, in the 12th String Quartet and the Violin Sonata, both in 1968. They are not, however, “dodecaphonic” compositions. The twelve-note themes are just that: they are not note-rows as Schoenberg intended them and they are used neither to negate tonality nor to create harmony by numbers. “If a composer sets himself the aim of writing purely dodecaphonic music at all costs,” said Shostakovich, “then he is artificially limiting himself. But using elements of this system can be fully justified when dictated by the actual compositional concept.”

The opening theme of the Violin Sonata, presented in quiet octaves by the piano, touches on 12 different pitches in its first fourteen notes and it goes on to supply much of the melodic material of much of the first movement. But, as the piano repeats that theme, the violin enters to personalise it with an expressive reminder of the four-note motif by which Shostakovich signs himself in many of his works. Not that anyone familiar with his music would have much difficulty in identifying the composer when – once those two ideas have been thoroughly associated with each other in an extended melodic dialogue – a new march-like theme in detached rhythms makes an appearance on the piano. It too is a twelve-note theme but at the same time entirely characteristic of Shostakovich. The rest of the movement is concerned with developing that material, but not without introducing two other sounds – a whispered cascade of arpeggios falling from high on the violin to the bottom of its range and, a few bars later, an omiinous warning of two loud notes a fourth apart made by piano trills and pizzicato violin. The latter is echoed in hushed tones on the bridge of the violin in the closing bars.

The second movement is a hard-driven, mainly loud or very loud kind of scherzo. Beginning and ending as a grotesquely aggressive march, it includes a more tuneful if still fierce episode in triple time in the middle. In its unremitting hyperactivity and frequent recourse to multiple stopping it calls for immense stamina from the violinist.

Like Britten, Shostakovich was more than once drawn to the passacaglia – a form whch features a theme repeated over and over again, more or less recognisably, while variant melodies weave themselves round it. The 11-bar passacaglia theme of the last movement of the Violin Sonata is first heard, after a short but heavily emphatic Largo introduction, in plucked notes on the unaccompanied violin, then low on the piano under a variant on violin, then in the right hand of the piano over a variant in the left, then in double-stopped chords on the violin… And so it goes on, generally increasing in activity (though not in tempo) until the intervention of a massive Liszt-like cadenza for the piano and a Paganini-like cadenza for the violin at the climax of the construction. The opening Largo gesture and the passacaglia theme are recalled and, as the work draws to a close, so are ideas from previous movements – including the whispered cascade of violin arpeggios and, in the very last bars, the ominous warning in eerie sul ponticello tremolandos.