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Violin Concerto No 1 in A Minor, Op. 77, was composed by Shostakovich
in circumstances similar to those in which his Fourth Symphony was
written. He worked on the symphony at the height of State oppression in
1936, and on the concerto in the most difficult period of 1948,
returning from meetings where Zhdanov would teach composers how to
write music.
The gloomy and monumental score was completed on 24 March 1948, but
because of accusations of “formalism” the premiere only followed seven
years later. David Oistrakh, for whom the concerto was written, learned
it in secret, and it was only in 1955 that it became possible to
perform it in public. The premiere took place on 29 October 1955 in
Leningrad. The concerto was performed to terrific acclaim under
the baton of Yevgeny Mravinsky. The finale was encored at
the insistence of the audience.
The concert is remarkable for its truly symphonic scale. It contains
four sections. The Nocturne is followed by a Scherzo, of which
the composer was a great admirer and where he used a heart-breaking
Jewish theme – the Freylekhs. The unusually expressive cadence of
the soloist links the Passacaglia, in which Beethoven’s “motif of fate”
is present, with the final Burlesque.
Anna Bulycheva |
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In the spring of 1866 Tchaikovsky, having only recently graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatoire, began work on his First Symphony, which was to be one of his most elegiac and lyrical confessions. Here the composer expressed pain and joy, confusion and strivings, the aspiration to the eternally beautiful and the sublime.
The work was composed in 1866 (between March and November) and it is dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein. The first performance of the symphony and highlights from it in Moscow and St Petersburg brought Tchaikovsky well-earned success.
The imagistic structure and the means of lyric expression, the dramatic thoughts and the musical expressiveness (particularly in the orchestrations) that emerged in the First Symphony were to prove typical for all of the composer’s symphonic scores. That was when Tchaikovsky formed his vividly individual symphonic method. This was the composer’s first step on the path to his symphonic masterpieces, concluding with the composition of the brilliant Sixth Symphony.
Anna Kolenkova
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