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Shostakovich, Piano Concerto No. 2 (complete) for solo piano (sheet music, Noten)
Shostakovich
Origins and early years
Dmitri Shostakovich (Russian: Дми́трий Дми́триевич Шостако́вич) ( Saint Petersburg , September 12 , 1906 (Julia) – Moscow , August 9 , 1975 ), full name with patronymic Dmitri Dmitrievitch Shostakovich , was a composer and pianist Russian of the Soviet period .
He started on the piano of his mother’s hand.
Later, from 1919 to 1925, he studied piano and composition at the Petrograd Conservatory.
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He composed his first symphony in 1925, premiered on May 5, 1926 in Berlin .
The Soviet government of the time commissioned the second symphony for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution .
From 1925 to 1935 he wrote several avant-garde compositions. His operas El Nas in 1930 and Ledi Màkbet Mtsènskogo Uiezda in 1934 stood out. The latter caused a scandal in New York City and strong criticism from the Stalinist government, which banned it.
Over time, Shostakovich regained favor with the Soviet government, notably with his Fifth Symphony in 1937.
During World War II he wrote about the heroism of the Soviet people. His seventh symphony was written during the siege of Leningrad .
After the war, from 1948, he suffered the persecution of Andrei Zhdanov and could not write freely until the death of Stalin in 1953.
He died on August 9, 1975, leaving a legacy of fifteen symphonies, fifteen concertos, two operas, three dozen film pieces and many works of chamber music, including fifteen string quartets, and many others minor works and songs.
Born on Podolskaya Street in Saint Petersburg ( Russian Empire ), Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasílievna Kokoúlina. Shostakovich’s paternal grandfather, originally surnamed Szostakowicz, was of Catholic Polish descent (his family roots go back to the region of the city of Vileyka in present-day Belarus ), but his immediate ancestors came from Siberia .
A Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 1863–1864, Bolesław Szostakowicz went into exile in Narym (near Tomsk ) in 1866 during the repression that followed Dmitri Karakózov’s assassination attempt on the Tsar Alexander II .
When his period of exile ended, Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia , where he became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer’s father, was born in exile in Narym in 1875, studied physics and mathematics at St. Petersburg University and graduated in 1899. He then went to work as an engineer with Dmitri Mendeleyev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in St. Petersburg. In 1903, he married Sofiya Vasílievna Kokoúlina, one of six children born to a Siberian who also immigrated to the capital.
House in which Shostakovich was born (now School no. 267), with a commemorative plaque on the left.
Her son, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich, showed great musical talent after he began taking piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. On several occasions, he showed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played in the previous lesson and was “caught in the act” of playing music from the previous lesson while pretending to read different music placed in front of him.
In 1918, he wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party murdered by Bolshevik sailors.
In 1919, at the age of 13, Shostakovich was admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory, then directed by Aleksandr Glazunov , who closely monitored his progress and supported him.
He studied piano with Leonid Nikoláiev after a year in the class of Elena Rózanova, composition with Maximilián Steinberg and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolái Sokolov, of whom he became a friend.
He also attended the musical history classes of Aleksandr Ossovski. Steinberg tried to guide it in the way of the great Russian composers, but was disappointed to see him “wasting” his talent imitating Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokófiev .
Shostakovich also suffered from his apparent lack of political zeal, and initially failed his Marxist methodology exam in 1926. His first major musical achievement was the First Symphony (premiered in 1926), written as his graduation piece in the age of 19 years. This work attracted the attention of Mijaíl Tujachevski , who helped him find accommodation and work in Moscow , and sent a driver in “a very elegant car” to take him to a concert.
Beginning of his career
After graduation, Shostakovich initially embarked on a dual career as a concert pianist and composer, but his dry playing style was often unappreciated (his American biographer, Llorer Fay, comments on his “emotional restraint » and «fascinating rhythmic impulse». He won an ‘honorable mention’ at the first Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927 and attributed the disappointing result to suffering from appendicitis and the all-Polish jury. He had his appendix removed in April this year.
After the competition, Shostakovich met the conductor Bruno Walter , who was so impressed with his First Symphony that he conducted it at its premiere in Berlin that same year. Leopold Stokowski was equally impressed and directed the play in its premiere in the United States the following year in Philadelphia . Stokowski also made the first recording.
Shostakovich concentrated on composition thereafter, and soon limited his performances mainly to his own works. In 1927, he wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled October ), a patriotic piece with a pro-Soviet choral ending. Due to its experimental nature , as with the later Third Symphony , it was not acclaimed by critics with the enthusiasm received in the First .
This year also marked the beginning of Shostakovich’s relationship with Iván Sollertinsky , who remained his closest friend until the latter’s death in 1944. Sollertinsky introduced the composer to the music of Gustav Mahler , which had a strong influence on him from his Fourth Symphony onwards.
While writing the Second Symphony , Shostakovich also began work on his satirical opera The Nose , based on the story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol . In June 1929, against the composer’s wishes, the opera was performed and fiercely attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM).
Its stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to generally poor reviews and widespread misunderstanding among musicians.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Shostakovich worked at TRAM, a proletarian youth theater . Although he did little work on this publication, it protected him from ideological attack. Much of this period was spent writing her opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , which was first performed in 1934. It was an immediate success, both popularly and officially. It was described as “the result of the general success of socialist construction, of correct party politics”, and as an opera that “could only have been written by a Soviet composer educated in the best tradition of Soviet culture”.
Shostakovich married his first wife, Nina Varzar, in 1932. Difficulties led to divorce in 1935, but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first daughter, Galina.
Between October 1950 and March 1951 he composed the 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 87, dedicated to the pianist Tatiana Petrovna Nikolaieva . During the period that Shostakovich was composing these pieces, Nikolayeva called him every day and went to her house to watch him play what he had re-composed.
In 1952, the complete 24 preludes and fugues were performed for the first time, in the city of Leningrad, by Nikolayeva.