I. Largo II. Allegretto III. Allegretto
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote his Second Cello Concerto in 1966, which like the First composed six years earlier, was written for Mstislav Rostropovich, who premiered is on the composer's 60th birthday concert. The composition represents an important staging post in Shostakovich's career: it is the last work of his so-called “mature period”, paving the way for the 7 Blok songs op. 127, commonly regarded as the beginning of his “late period.” Dividing up a composer's work into “periods” makes some practical sense – in this case, it helps us find our bearings when confronted with some 500 compositions, but navigation aside, we should also bear in mind its inevitable inaccuracy. For example, the Second Concerto contains plenty of “late style” features, such as the signs of the recurring death-motifs, which are so characteristic of late Shostakovich. Eric Roseberry described the concerto thus: “the work offers no illusory consolation in this sad world” and essentially “it is a composer's autobiography, who for the first time is astonished by his own personal mortality.” The opening of the G minor first movement through an unusual sighing motif played by the solo cello creates a meditative atmosphere that will prevail to the very end. The movement's central section livens up a little, but after this temporary easing of the mood, the soloist enters into a despairing monologue broken up by drum beats. The second movement again begins with a cello solo: the cellist plays a familiar Russian song (roughly translating as “pretzels for sale”!). The appearance of this popular song, as so often with Shostakovich, does anything but release the tension of the opening movement: the banality of this circus-like melody creates a sense of indifference and repressed tragedy. The finale follows on from the second movement without a break, with a brass fanfare accompanied by the drums. This movement is a kind of “collage” constructed from diametrically opposed elements. The selection of the “units of atmosphere” evidently follow some kind of internal programme, since it is well known that Shostakovich believed that “the composer of a symphony, quartet or sonata may ensure that no programme for a work is published, but is obliged that there actually be just such a programme which should form the guiding basis of the work.” It is up to the listener's imagination to assess the meaning of the opening quotation from Boris Godunov and its various variations, as well as the hair raisingly painful quotation from the second movement pretzel song.