About this Piece

Both dedicated to the same soloist, the composer’s soulmate Mstislav Rostropovich (1927–2007), Dmitri Shostakovich’s two cello concertos are as different as champagne and vodka. Completed in 1959, the First boasts a wildly extroverted, showy, and bubbly personality. The Second, finished around Shostakovich’s 60th birthday in 1966, shares the darker, more introspective mood of the intellectually dense music of his later years.

In a letter to his friend Isaac Glikman dated April 27, 1966, written from a sanatorium in Crimea where Shostakovich was resting after a stressful concert schedule, he described his progress.

“Since this work has no literary text or program, I find it difficult to write anything about it. In scale it is large and has three movements. The second and the third are performed without a pause. In the second movement and in the climax of the third a theme very similar to the popular Odessa street vendors’ song ‘Kupite bubliki’ (‘Buy our pretzels’) appears. I couldn’t begin to explain what provoked me to do this. But it’s really very similar. As I was composing I was, of course, thinking about the magnificent M. Rostropovich. I’m counting on him to perform it.”

Rostropovich readily agreed. Yevgeny Mravinsky, who had led the premieres of most of Shostakovich’s symphonies with the Leningrad Philharmonic, was scheduled to conduct. But shortly before the concert Mravinsky canceled. His relationship with the composer had soured after he declined to conduct the premiere of the controversial 13th Symphony, “Babi Yar,” a few years earlier. Shostakovich’s choral setting of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem denouncing German and Russian anti-Semitism had infuriated Communist Party officials and scared Mravinsky off.

So the concerto’s premiere took place not in Leningrad but in the friendly confines of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, with Rostropovich joining Yevgeny Svetlanov and the USSR State Symphony Orchestra in a festive concert held on the composer’s birthday—September 25, 1966.

Initially, Shostakovich thought of the concerto as a symphony with a solo cello part but decided to expand the cello’s role. The writing for the soloist stresses unusual sonic effects rather than virtuosity and blends with the orchestral texture in chamber-like ensembles featuring unusual combinations of instruments. Small motifs and melodic ideas flow and bend through mood-changing transformation and disfiguration.

Slow and moderate tempos dominate. The first-movement Largo opens with a cello solo, an ominous phrase revolving around a descending minor second, then quietly and extensively developed by the strings, with assistance from harp and horns. “One would think that there is nothing special about the way Shostakovich orchestrates the opening; just cello and low strings,” said Rostropovich. “But in real physical sound the effect is quite amazing.”

When the xylophone, harp, and woodwinds enter, the mood turns playful and sardonic, a macabre merry dance. The first of the concerto’s two daunting cadenzas follows, a quirky duet for the soloist and bass drum that creates stunning tension in timbre, register, and atmosphere. The bassoon restates the first theme, leading to a recapitulation of the two themes, dark and light, in the cello part, restoring the reflective, almost liturgical mood that prevailed at the outset.

Infectious and increasingly frenzied treatment of the Odessa ditty “Buy our pretzels” dominates the second movement. Shostakovich’s use of this urban folk tune recalls similar moments in the symphonies of Mahler, whom Shostakovich admired for his mastery of emotional and contextual contrast. The ironic atmosphere invades the opening measures of the third movement, announced by a cockeyed fanfare from the horns setting the stage for the second cadenza. Here, the soloist negotiates knotty double-stopped intervals of fourths across three strings before the slithering tambourine enters for a weird duet.

A short baroque-style motif ending in a trill for the soloist serves as a serene unifying idea in the finale, clashing in cinematic montage-like structure with sections of frenzied gaiety. With a grotesque reprise of the pretzel song, the violence increases, punctuated by terrifying slaps of the slapstick. But the prevailing pensiveness soon reasserts itself.

In the final pages, Shostakovich again turns to the large percussion section for eerie and somber effects: Against a long-held bass note D in the solo part, the wood block, tom-tom, snare drum, and xylophone beat out a quiet but insistent patter. Like a clock winding down, it delivers a birthday message of mortality.

—Harlow Robinson