Cello Concerto No. 2 (Shostakovich)
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126, in 1966 in the Crimea. Like the first concerto, it was written for Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the premiere in Moscow under Yevgeny Svetlanov on 25 September 1966 at the composer's 60th birthday concert. The concerto is sometimes listed as in the key of G, but the score gives no such indication.
Along with the Eleventh String Quartet, the Preface to the Complete Works, and the Seven Romances on Texts by Alexander Blok, the Second Cello Concerto signals the beginning of Shostakovich's late style.[1]
Composition
Like the Fourth Symphony and Ninth String Quartet before it and the Fifteenth Symphony after it, the Second Cello Concerto gave Shostakovich some compositional problems. The opening Largo was originally conceived as the start of a new symphony. But Shostakovich abandoned that idea, and reworked the movement into its present form. The finale also gave him trouble. He confessed to Rostropovich that he had a finale completely written out but decided it was weak, scrapped it, and replaced it with the one we know today. Shostakovich also allowed Rostropovich to make a few changes to the concerto's cadenzas.
Scoring
The concerto is scored for solo cello, one piccolo, one flute, two oboes, two clarinets (each doubling B♭ and A), two bassoons, contrabassoon (doubling 3rd bassoon), two horns, timpani, slapstick, wood block, tom-tom, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum, xylophone, two harps (always in unison as indicated on the score), and strings.
The concerto lasts around 35 minutes and has three movements:
- Largo
- Allegretto
- Allegretto
Structure
First movement
The first movement begins with solo cello, later joined by cellos and basses in octaves, interrupted by the cadenza before the opening theme returns. It then builds up with a series of interjections by the xylophone. The exchanges continue until the cello leads the orchestra into a climax, which gives way to a cadenza restating the opening material, punctuated by bass drum thumps. The movement ends softly.
Second movement
The second movement is based on a theme from an Odessa street song, Bubliki, kupitye, bubliki (Buy My Bread Rolls).[2][3]
Third movement
The finale begins with French horn fanfares, followed by a cello cadenza accompanied only by tambourine. The Allegretto then moves through lyric, march, and dance sections. It builds in intensity, rising with an exchange of cello bursts countered by the snare drum, eventually developing into a climax; first restating the fanfare theme, then reverting to a grotesque variation of the Odessa theme. The whip is cracked twice during the climax, then ending the tutti. The cello then revisits the dancelike statement from earlier in the movement. In the coda the cello sustains a D over a percussion motif, concluding with a solo sforzando.
References
Citations
- ^ Ivashkin, Alexander V. (2012). "'Shostakovich. Second Cello Concerto.' In D.D. Shostakovich, New Collected Works Critical Edition, vol. 49. Moscow: DSCH, 2012, 83–124". D.D. Shostakovich, New Collected Works Critical Edition, Vol. 49. Moscow: DSCH, 2012, 83–124. 49: 89.
- ^ Ritzarev, Marina (2024-04-29). "Was Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto a Hidden Homage?". Arts. 13 (3): 80. doi:10.3390/arts13030080. ISSN 2076-0752.
- ^ Hulme 2010, p. 495.
Sources
- Hulme, Derek C. (2010). Dmitri Shostakovich: The First Hundred Years and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810872646.
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- The Nose
- Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District/Katerina Izmailova
- The Big Lightning (unfinished)
- Orango (unfinished)
- The Twelve Chairs (unfinished)
- Katyusha Maslova (unfinished)
- The Gamblers (unfinished)
- Moscow, Cheryomushki
- The Golden Age
- The Bolt
- The Limpid Stream
- No. 1 in F minor
- No. 2 in B major (To October)
- No. 3 in E♭ major (The First of May)
- No. 4 in C minor
- No. 5 in D minor
- No. 6 in B minor
- No. 7 in C major (Leningrad)
- No. 8 in C minor
- No. 9 in E♭ major
- No. 10 in E minor
- No. 11 in G minor (The Year 1905)
- No. 12 in D minor (The Year 1917)
- No. 13 in B♭ minor (Babi Yar)
- No. 14 in G minor
- No. 15 in A major
Piano |
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Violin |
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Cello |
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- Tahiti Trot
- Suite from The Golden Age
- Suite from The Bolt
- Suite from The Limpid Stream
- Five Fragments
- Scherzo (1922)
- Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1
- Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2 (orch. McBurney)
- Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 (arr. Atovmyan)
- Festive Overture
- Suite from Encounter at the Elbe
- Suite from The Gadfly (arr. Atovmyan)
- Novorossiisk Chimes, the Flame of Eternal Glory
- October
- "Intervision"
- The New Babylon
- Alone
- Golden Mountains
- Counterplan
- The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda
- The Youth of Maxim
- Girl Friends
- The Return of Maxim
- The Vyborg Side
- Friends
- The Great Citizen
- Zoya
- Simple People
- The Young Guard
- Pirogov
- Michurin
- Meeting on the Elbe
- The Fall of Berlin
- Belinsky
- The Unforgettable Year 1919
- The Gadfly
- Five Days, Five Nights
- Sofiya Perovskaya
- Hamlet
- King Lear
- Gogoliad (unfinished)
- Suite on Finnish Themes
- Song of the Forests
- The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland
- Antiformalist Rayok
- From Jewish Folk Poetry
- The Execution of Stepan Razin
- Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok
- Loyalty
- Six Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva
- Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti
- Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin
String quartets |
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Other |
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- Three Fantastic Dances
- 24 Preludes
- Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor
- Children's Notebook
- 24 Preludes and Fugues
- Galina Shostakovich (daughter)
- Maxim Shostakovich (son)
- Concerto DSCH
- DSCH motif
- Europe Central
- Ian MacDonald
- Muddle Instead of Music
- The Noise of Time
- Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox
- Solomon Volkov
- Testimony: book
- film
- The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin
- Wihuri Sibelius Prize